IIP 


I've  Been  Thinking 


CAUT. 


Been  Thinking 

BY 

CHARLES  BATTELL  LOOMIS 


NEW  YORK 

JAMES  POTT  fcf  COMPANY 

1905 


Copyright,  ipos,  by 
JAMES  POTT  &  COMPANY 

FOST  Ixr*E£SioN,  SEPTEMBER,  1905 


TO   MY  BOYHOOD    FRIEND 


Cynthia,   Cynthia,  I've  Been  Thinking" 


PREFACE 

I  WANTED  a  book  that  I  could  pick  up  if  I 
had  five  minutes  to  wait  before  she  came 
down  stairs,  or  before  the  doctor  called  me  into 
his  office,  or  that  I  could  slip  into  my  pocket  to 
read  while  on  my  way  to  pay  that  long  postponed 
visit  to  my  suburban  friend. 

There  were  lots  of  stories  but  they  were  too 
long.  Just  as  I  got  to  the  exciting  part  she 
would  come  down,  or  the  doctor  would  say 
"Step  this  way,  please,"  or  the  conductor  would 
say  "Hopeless.  All  out." 

You  see  I  didn't  want  the  book  to  have  any 
settled  line  of  talk  in  it  at  all.  I  wished  it  to 
treat  of  the  destruction  of  moths,  the  barbarity 
of  war,  the  training  of  children,  the  fascination 
of  automobiling,  the  sins  of  millionaires,  the 
virtues  of  beggars,  the  lure  of  the  country  and 
the  lures  of  the  city. 


viii  P  r  e  f  a  c  e 

I  didn't  want  it  to  take  any  topic  too  seriously, 
and  I  didn't  want  to  feel  that  because  I  laughed 
at  the  first  sketch  I  would  have  to  laugh  at  the 
second.  I  wanted  it  hit  or  miss  all  the  way 
through. 

Not  finding  such  a  miscellaneous  book  in 
any  of  the  book  stores  I  set  to  work  to  write  one 
myself,  and  now  when  I  feel  the  need  of  advice 
I  take  this  book  down  and  get  many  useful 
hints  about  the  care  of  children,  millionaires, 
servants,  and  moths.  It's  somewhat  like  lifting 
one's  self  by  one's  boot  straps  (an  unusually 
impossible  thing  these  days  since  boots  have 
gone  out),  but  I  don't  have  to  take  my  own 
advice,  and  I  would  advise  you  not  to  take  it 
either  if  it  occasions  the  least  inconvenience. 

If  you  are  a  husband  you  will  find  many 
cheerful  hits  at  your  wife.  If  you  are  a  wife 
you  will  find  that  I  have  polished  off  your 
husband.  If  you  are  a  money  grabber  or  a 
money  grubber  (variations  of  the  same  vile 


Preface  ix 

animal)  you  may  enjoy  the  hits  at  spendthrifts, 
and  if  you  are  a  generous  liver  you  may  find  to 
your  liking  my  shots  at  misers. 

I  have  not  scrupled  to  hit  myself  and  these 
stabs  have  cut  deep,  but  I  fear  they  will  do  me 
no  permanent  good.  You  may  not  be  benefited 
either,  but  if  the  book  does  fill  in  that  gap  I 
spoke  of  that  comes  before  you  hear  the  rustle 
of  her  adorable  skirts  on  the  stairs,  or  if  it 
prevents  your  thinking  of  the  doctor's  call,  or  if 
it  enables  you  to  bear  up  under  your  suburban 
visit,  I'll  be  more  than  satisfied. 

CHAELES  BATTELL  Looms 


I've  Been  Thinking 

r 

THE  other  day  I  had  been  going  on  at  a 
pretty  rapid  rate,  denouncing  the  ill-gotten 
money  of  the  American  "  robber  barons,"  saying 
that  I  would  rather  die  poor  but  honest  than  be 
as  rich  as  —  I  can't  think  of  his  name,  but  he 
is  respected  by  the  unthinking  everywhere. 

Suddenly  a  man  who  is  known  from  end  to 
end  of  the  world  came  up  to  me  —  yes,  to  me, 
and  asked  me,  how  I  was  getting  along. 

Why,  I  almost  gasped  for  breath.  He  is 
worth  millions,  and  I  wondered  how  he  could 
have  heard  of  me,  who  owe  the  dollar  and  a 
quarter  that  I  call  my  own. 

Now,  if  ever  anybody  made  his  money  sin- 


2  I've  Been  Thinking 

fully  he  did.  He  stands  high  up  among  the 
Standard  Oil  men  and  I  yield  to  no  one  in 
contempt  for  his  methods,  although  I  will  admit 
that  his  manners  are  perfect  and  he  certainly 
seems  to  know  people  outside  of  his  world. 

He  congratulated  me  on  a  story  of  mine  that 
he  had  read.  It  was  one  satirizing  plutocrats, 
but  he  had  missed  the  satire  and  had  taken  it 
as  a  compliment. 

Said  he,  "I  wish  to  help  people  in  all  the 
arts.  I  wish  to  seek  out  artists  and  give  them 
rolls  of  money.  I  want  to  find  struggling  musi- 
cians and  help  them  to  an  education.  And  I 
particularly  want  to  give  you  a  house  and  lot 
and  some  shares  of  railroad  stock  that  will  yield 
you  an  income  of  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year." 

Well,  you  may  imagine  I  did  not  know  what 
to  do.  However  the  man  may  have  come  by 
his  money,  he  was  certainly  moved  by  kindly 
feelings  in  wishing  to  share  with  me. 

I  hesitated   and   hemmed   and  hawed   and 


I've  Been  Thinking  3 

thought  of  my  family  and  of  the  good  uses  to 
which  I  might  put  the  money. 

And  then  I  remembered  that  my  ancestors 
were  Puritans,  and  that  not  one  of  them  in  all 
the  nine  generations  ever  told  a  lie  or  did 
anything  wrong  in  any  way  whatsoever,  and  I 
took  a  long  breath  and  said,  "Thy  money  perish 
with  thee.  I'll  have  none  of  it." 

And  then  I  woke  up. 


WHAT  would  we  have  thought  of  that 
mother  who  thirty  or  even  fifteen  years 
ago  allowed  her  children  to  play  tag  and  spin 
tops  on  the  railroad  track  of  a  trunk  line  ?  We 
would  have  called  her  lacking  in  common  sense. 
But  the  world  moves,  and  although  mothers 
still  object  to  their  children  playing  tag  and 
spinning  tops  on  railroad  tracks,  steam  cars 
are  now  allowed  on  our  highways  and  byways, 
and  whereas  the  railroad  train  runs  on  a  sched- 


4  I've  Been  Thinking 

ule,  the  modern  steam  car  and  its  brothers  the 
electric  car  and  the  gasoline  motor  run  at  full 
speed  under  no  schedule,  and  they  run  where 
children  most  do  congregate. 

And  so  used  do  we  become  to  dangers  that 
we  mothers  —  I  speak  as  a  man  —  sit  at  our 
bedroom  windows  and  calmly  continue  our 
sewing  as  we  watch  Willy  elude  a  machine  run- 
ning at  twenty  miles  an  hour,  and  Jenny  calmly 
step  aside  to  allow  the  passage  of  a  road-de- 
vouring monster,  painted  red  and  "chugging" 
in  a  manner  unknown  to  our  fathers,  who  did 
not  even  know  what  "chugging"  was. 

Now,  when  air-ships  are  common  and  they 
begin  to  fall  from  the  sky,  as  they  most  cer- 
tainly will  in  the  hands  of  inexperienced  aero- 
nauts, the  careful  mother  will  at  first  make  her 
children  play  in  the  house  or  in  some  protected 
playground,  but  after  awhile  she  will  realize 
that  this  world  is  meant  to  be  lived  in,  danger 
or  no  danger,  and  she  will  merely  say:  " Willy, 


I've  Been  Thinking          5 

if  you  hear  a  strange  noise  overhead  look  up  and 
dodge  or  I  can't  let  you  play  out  of  doors." 

And  in  learning  to  dodge  a  falling  airship 
and  at  the  same  time  keep  out  of  the  path  of  a 
hurtling  motor-car,  the  children  of  the  future 
will  get  to  be  so  nimble  that  the  race  as  a  whole 
will  be  improved.  It  will  be  a  fast  race,  in  fact. 

Which  shows  that  everything  is  for  the  best. 


IN  the  fiftieth  year  of  the  life  of  Jabez  Holtite, 
the  multi-millionaire,  the  thought  came  to 
him  that  it  might  be  good  for  his  soul  if  he  gave 
away  in  charity  some  of  the  money  that  he  had 
reached  out  and  picked  up  right  and  left  since 
his  "pickers  and  stealers"  had  been  strong 
enough  to  clutch. 

Jabez  had  never  troubled  churches  by  his 
presence  and  he  did  not  know  that  there  is  an 
injunction  that  you  let  not  your  left  hand  know 
what  your  right  hand  doeth. 


6  I've  Been  Thinking 

And  yet  in  acquiring  his  wealth  it  must  be 
said  that  he  had  unwittingly  carried  out  the 
spirit  of  that  precept,  for  many  of  the  doings  of 
his  right  hand  were  of  so  questionable  a  nature 
that  he  had  kept  his  left  hand  in  darkness  for 
very  shame.  But  (to  speak  fair)  if  the  right 
hand  had  known  of  some  of  the  deeds  of  the 
left  hand  it  would  have  blushed.  Oh,  they 
were  a  good  pair  of  hands,  those  hands  of  the 
multi-millionaire !  Ever  faithful  to  his  material 
interests  had  they  been,  but  now  he  was  afraid 
that  his  chance  of  heaven  would  be  meager  if 
they  did  not  together  act  as  almoners — of  course, 
with  a  proper  "barker"  before  them  to  trumpet 
forth  their  good  deeds  to  an  admiring  world. 

So  Jabez  Holtite  sent  for  a  reporter  and  said 
to  him:  "What  is  the  best  way  to  let  the 
world  know  that  I  am  not  merely  an  acquirer 
of  wealth,  but  that  all  my  money-getting  has 
had  but  one  object,  the  final  giving  away  of  all 
my  goods  to  the  poor?" 


I've  Been  Thinking  7 

The  reporter  said,  "You  might  advertise 
on  our  financial  page  to  this  effect:  'Jabez 
Holtite,  millionaire,  wishes  to  divide  his  wealth 
among  the  really  deserving.  Address  him  at 
the  Post-office,  naming  amount  desired  and 
giving  your  oath  to  requite  him  by  spreading 
abroad  the  good  report  of  his  generosity.'" 

Jabez  looked  troubled.  "I  am  afraid  that 
would  be  too  widespread  in  its  effect,"  said  he. 
"I  expect  to  live  many  years,  and  did  not  intend 
to  give  you  the  impression  that  I  wished  to 
divest  myself  of  my  means  as  a  man  divests 
himself  of  his  shirt  —  at  once.  I  thought  I 
would  be  willing  to  give  something  like  a  thou- 
sand dollars  to  some  well-known  institution, 
and  I  am  willing  —  perfectly  willing  —  to  talk 
about  it  to  the  extent  of  a  column  in  your  paper." 

The  reporter  grew  an  inch.  "Mr.  Holtite," 
said  he,  "if  you  are  actually  going  to  give  a 
thousand  dollars  to  any  sort  of  charitable  insti- 
tution, or  even  to  a  college,  and  will  promise  to 


8  I've  Been  Thinking 

let  no  other  newspaper  hear  of  it  before  we 
have  a  chance  to  give  it  publicity,  we  will  be 
glad  to  devote  our  whole  first  page  to  it  because 
it  will  be  in  the  nature  of  absolutely  startling 
news.  You  have  never  given  a  cent  to  any  one 
in  your  life,  as  I  understand  it?" 

"Never,  unless  I  was  sure  that  I  would  get 
two  cents  in  return,"  said  Jabez,  with  a  proud 
smile. 

"Then  I  suggest  that  you  give  your  money 
to  some  institution  that  is  already  heavily  en- 
dowed and  that  will  thus  be  worthy  of  your 
unexampled  generosity."  And  the  reporter 
named  such  an  institution. 

Then  he  took  down  in  great  detail  all  the 
facts  in  the  life  of  Jabez  as  seen  by  the  million- 
aire himself,  getting  thereby  a  picture  of  the 
man  that  no  one  else  in  the  wide  world  would 
have  painted,  and  worth  at  least  six  columns  to 
the  reporter,  who  had  it  all  for  the  mere  taking 
it  down  in  shorthand. 


I've  Been  Thinking  9 

The  reporter  was  of  a  grateful  disposition 
and,  knowing  that  this  interview  would  spell 
success  for  him,  he  wished  to  make  a  return  to 
Jabez,  and  being  not  only  grateful  but  also 
waggish,  the  form  of  his  return  was  as  follows : — 

"Mr.  Holtite,"  said  he,  "charity  is  charity, 
and  a  good  deed  much  blown  about  penetrates 
to  remote  places  and  is  put  to  the  credit  of  the 
doer  of  the  deed;  but  if  the  good  deed  can  be 
made  to  bear  immediate  fruit,  if  your  bread 
comes  back  on  the  return  wave,  so  to  speak, 
you  will  probably  stand  for  a  long  time  on  the 
beach  chucking  loaves  into  the  sea." 

"Go  on,"  said  Jabez;  "I  am  listening." 

"My  idea  is,"  said  the  reporter,  "and  I  hope 
you  will  take  my  frankness  in  the  proper  spirit, 
that  the  public  would  as  soon  believe  that 
Roosevelt  was  a  figure-head,  or  that  William  of 
Germany  was  a  puppet,  as  that  you,  Jabez 
Holtite,  would  actually  give  away  money,  and 
I  think  there  are  thousands  in  this  great  city 


io          I've  Been  Thinking 

who  would  gladly  give  a  dollar  apiece  to  see 
you  in  the  act." 

"Ah,  they  know  I  am  a  wonder  as  an  acquis- 
itor,"  said  Jabez,  mentally  hugging  himself. 

"Sure,"  said  the  reporter.  "Now  why  not 
hire  Madison  Square  Garden,  erect  a  platform 
in  the  middle  of  the  arena  and  give  away  a 
thousand  dollars  every  hour  on  the  stroke  of 
the  clock  ?  You  might  also  give  them  a  fifteen- 
minute  talk  on  how  to  become  a  millionaire  on  a 
capital  of  two  cents  and  an  atrophied  conscience. 
You  catch  my  point?" 

' '  Why,  certainly, ' '  said  Jabez.  ' '  Young  man, 
you  have  a  brilliant  future." 

The  whole  world  knows  the  result.  Madison 
Square  Garden  was  crowded  every  hour  at  a 
dollar  a  head. 

And  every  hour,  at  the  stroke  of  the  clock, 
Jabez  Holtite  gave  to  well-known  and  influential 
institutions  a  thousand  dollars  and  a  fifteen- 
minute  talk  worth  a  thousand  more  to  persons 


I've  Been  Thinking          n 

with  the  proper  consciences,  and  he  felt  that  it 
was  well  worth  giving  when  the  gate  receipts 
were  so  large. 

He  came  to  think  that  it  would  have  been 
better  for  him  if  he  had  begun  to  give  sooner  in 
life,  and  his  mouth  grew  less  hard  solely  from 
the  human  feelings  that  surged  up  in  his  heart 
every  time  he  handed  out  a  check  for  a  thousand 
dollars  and  realized  that  the  Garden  was  packed 
at  a  dollar  per. 

At  the  end  of  the  week  he  had  given  away 
$50,000  and  had  taken  in  $500,000,  and  then, 
to  show  that  his  regeneration  was  genuine,  he 
hired  the  Garden  for  another  week  and  doubled 
the  price  of  admission,  doubling  also  his  gift. 

And  to  show  that  he  was  no  ingrate  he  gave 
the  reporter  a  season  pass  and  allowed  him  to 
interview  him  every  day.  And  at  times  he 
could  hear  his  own  heart  beat,  and  then  he 
knew  that  he  had  become  generous.  And  his 
reputation  as  a  cheerful  giver  was  almost  as 


12          I've  Been  Thinking 

great  at  the  end  of  the  second  week  as  his  former 
reputation  for  meanness. 
It  all  depends  upon  the  way  it's  done. 


IF  you  do  not  care  to  wreck  your  bark  on  the 
breakers  of  divorce,  see  to  it  that  Love  stands 
at  the  tiller  when  you  go  aboard. 

"Love  suffereth  long  and  is  kind."  A  very 
pleasant  fellow  to  have  at  the  helm,  you  must 
admit. 

When  you  go  down  to  the  pier  at  which  the 
little  boat  is  moored,  you  and  she,  be  sure  to  it 
that  Love,  the  dear  little  fellow,  is  standing 
somewhere  near,  and  then  do  you  call  him  up 
and  say,  "I  entrust  my  bark  to  your  keeping. 
We  want  to  sail  as  long  as  the  boat  lasts  and 
we  want  you  to  guide  us  among  pleasant  places. 
If  storms  come  up  we  do  not  wish  to  evade 
them,  only  see  to  it  that  we  weather  all  gales ; 


I've  Been  Thinking          13 

and  whatever  you  do,  see  to  it  that  we  do  not 
strike  on  the  rock  of  divorce." 

And  Love  will  shake  his  curly  head  and  say 
with  a  merry  laugh: 

"I  have  acted  as  helmsman  to  many  a  couple, 
but  never  yet  have  I  struck  on  the  rock  of 
divorce.  Now,  over  there  is  a  well  dressed 
sailor  named  Gold.  His  boat  is  bigger  than 
this  and  is  furnished  better,  but  if  I  do  say  it, 
he  cannot  mind  helm  as  well  as  I,  for  many  and 
many  a  couple  has  he  spilled  out  on  either  side 
of  the  rock  of  divorce.  Are  you  ready,  sir? 
Shall  I  cast  off? 

"Cast  off,  my  hearty,"  say  you.  "We  are 
in  for  a  long  and  perhaps  an  ad  venturous  voyage, 
but  with  you  and  with  her  on  board  I'll  be 
bound  it  will  be  a  happy  one." 

All  of  which  is  a  pretty  little  allegory  and  I 
made  it  up  out  of  my  own  little  head. 

And  it's  true,  every  word  of  it. 


14          I've  Been  Thinking 

"T  ENCLOSE  an  interesting  clipping  that  will 
A  appeal  especially  to  you.  Let  me  know 
what  you  think  of  it." 

And  then  she  doesn't  enclose  it  and  the 
recipient  of  her  letter  vainly  hunts  for  it. 

The  non-enclosing  habit  follows  the  postal 
route  all  over  the  world. 

It  can  be  carried  to  maddening  extremes,  as 
when  the  young  man  who  is  stranded  in  the 
West  receives  a  loving  letter  from  his  mother,  in 
which,  after  telling  him  all  the  little  inconse- 
quences of  his  native  village,  she  says,  "I  did 
not  know  what  to  get  you  for  your  birthday  and 
so  enclose  a  five-dollar  bill." 

Imagine  the  feelings  of  the  poor  tenderfoot, 
down  to  his  last  cent,  when  he  finds  that  she 
has  forgotten  the  enclosure.  If  only  she  had 
forgotten  the  village  gossip  and  remembered  the 
thing  that  would  have  made  that  particular 
letter  memorable. 


I've  Been  Thinking          15 

In  the  same  class  as  the  non-enclosers  are 
those  who  say,  "Of  course,  George  will  have 
written  you  about  the  mysterious  happenings  in 
the  house  of  Cynthia  Alendale.  How  do  you 
account  for  them?" 

It  is  more  than  likely  that  if  George  has 
written  at  all  he  will  have  said,  "I  suppose  that 
Emma  has  told  you  all  about  the  blood-curdling 
affair  at  Cynthia  Alendale 's  so  I  will  not  waste 
your  time  by  telling  you  about  it.  But  wasn't 
it  awful?  What  are  we  coming  to?" 

If  only  George  and  Emma  had  assumed  that 
the  other  had  not  told  a  single  thing  about  the 
interesting  affair!  Here  and  there  are  people 
who  hate  to  receive  letters,  but  most  of  us  are 
human  (Heaven  be  praised!)  and  so  in  writing 
put  in  all  the  human  touches  you  can  think  of, 
and  don't  assume  that  "the  other  fellow"  has 
written  all  the  interesting  news  because  you 
may  depend  upon  it  he  hasn't. 

And    remember    to    put   in    the    enclosure 


1 6          I've  Been  Thinking 

even  if  you  forget  to  post  the  letter  contain- 
ing it. 


I  KNOW  it  is  none  of  my  business,  but  are 
you  going  to  let  Jane  grow  up  with  that 
unpleasant  voice? 

Haven't  you  read  the  praise  of  Southern 
women's  voices  to  some  advantage  ? 

I  don't  suppose  that  Jane's  speaking  voice 
could  ever  be  made  really  melodious,  although, 
strange  to  say,  her  singing  voice  is  not  at  all 
unpleasant. 

But  you  could  eliminate  that  strident  quality. 

The  other  day  I  was  sitting  in  the  seaward 
end  of  a  ferryboat  when  Jane  came  in  from  the 
slip.  The  boat  was  full  and  every  one  was 
talking,  but  Jane's  voice  rose  above  all  the  others 
and  almost  every  one  looked  up. 

I'll  venture  to  say  that  most  of  them  were 
reminded  of  a  beautiful  macaw. 


I've  Been  Thinking          17 

For  there  is  no  denying  that  Jane  is  a  hand- 
some girl. 

And  she's  a  bright  girl  and  she  says  bright 
things,  but  they  are  all  screeched  at  you. 

If  Jane  marries  let  her  pick  out  a  phlegmatic 
man,  unless  she  uses  a  file  on  that  voice.  It 
would  be  cruelty  to  animals  to  let  her  marry  a 
sensitive  soul,  say  a  painter  or  a  writer,  because 
to  be  shut  up  in  the  same  cage  day  after  day 
with  the  most  beautiful  macaw  imaginable 
would  be  to  have  one's  nerves  de-insulated. 

She  may  be  disobedient  and  outgrow  it;  she 
may  be  disrespectful  and  outgrow  it. 

But  if  your  daughter  has  an  unpleasant  voice 
she  won't  outgrow  it  unless  you  keep  at  her  all 
the  time. 


HAVE  you  ever  heard  about  that  business 
man  who  in  advertising  his  particular 
brand  of  breakfast  fodder  increased  the  circula- 


1 8          I've  Been  Thinking 

tion  of  the  paper  in  which  he  advertised  a 
hundred -fold  ? 

Well,  it  was  this  way.  His  name  was  Wise, 
and  he  had  unlimited  money  to  spend.  He  had 
formerly  owned  a  sawmill  and  he  naturally 
had  a  large  quantity  of  sawdust  on  hand.  It 
struck  him  that  if  he  could  buy  a  low-priced 
molasses,  and  could  make  an  amalgam  of 
molasses  and  sawdust  and  advertise  it  as  the 
only  nutritious  food,  good  alike  for  brain, 
brawn,  cuticle,  and  hair,  he  could  make  a  fortune 
in  a  month  or  two. 

So  he  called  in  an  advertising  man,  and  put 
him  on  a  princely  salary  at  once,  and  said: 

"Go  ahead.  Advertise  Sord  Ust  in  any 
way  you  like,  as  long  as  you  get  the  people's 
attention." 

Now,  the  advertising  man  was  a  genius  and 
he  said  to  himself:  "If  I  advertise  this  thing 
a  little  in  every  paper  people  will  only  think  a 
little  of  it,  but  if  I  bend  all  my  energies  on  one 


I've  Been  Thinking          19 

paper,  and  that  a  very  important  one,  and 
advertise  it  there  uniquely  for  a  month  or  so, 
the  very  oddity  of  the  thing  will  attract  atten- 
tion." ' 

So  he  went  to  the  office  of  the  Daily  Howler 
and  said : 

"I  want  to  buy  every  page  in  your  paper  for 
advertising  purposes." 

And  the  business  manager  told  him  it  couldn't 
be  done. 

So  the  advertising  man  showed  him  what  a 
large  check  he  could  write,  and  then  the  business 
manager  said  it  was  possible,  and  the  next  day 
Mr.  Man  had  every  page  in  the  Daily  Howler. 
There  was  not  a  murder,  not  a  bit  of  editorial 
speculation,  not  a  thing  of  any  sort  in  the  paper, 
except  the  name  and  the  date  and  the  subscrip- 
tion price. 

And  of  course  there  was  no  advertisement. 
And  that  piqued  curiosity. 

Well,  this  thing  happened  next  day  and  the 


20          I've  Been  Thinking 

next,  and  then  on  the  editorial  page  was  printed 
in  very  small  letters, 

TRY  SORD  UST 

Now  you  may  well  believe  that  subscribers 
began  to  rush  in,  for  here  was  a  paper  that 
could  be  introduced  into  the  most  bigoted  home 
in  the  land.  There  were  no  tiresome  politics 
in  it;  no  dreadful  murders;  nothing  but  Sord  Ust. 

Every  one  said  it  was  the  cleanest  paper  that 
had  ever  been  issued,  and  more  and  more  people 
subscribed  to  it.  It  got  to  be  quite  a  fad.  To 
be  sure,  the  subscribers  did  not  know  what  was 
going  on  in  the  world  except  by  hearsay,  but 
they  had  that  much  more  time  for  other  things, 
and  they  were,  consequently,  far  happier,  and, 
reading  about  no  murders  or  steamship  trusts 
or  Presidential  possibilities,  they  finally  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  millennium  was  at 
hand. 

But,  of  course,  the  thing  that  made  the  most 


I've  Been  Thinking          21 

impression  on  them  was  this  Sord  Ust.  They 
began  to  inquire  for  it  in  the  stores  and  they 
found  that  no  one  kept  it.  No  one  had  ever 
heard  of  it.  It  was  impossible  to  buy  a  box  of 
it  anywhere  because  the  clever  advertising  man 
had  given  orders  to  his  employer  to  refuse  to 
sell  it  for  at  least  six  months. 

People  did  not  even  know  whether  it  was  a 
new  kind  of  soap,  or  a  breakfast  food,  or  the 
latest  thing  in  stove  polish. 

What  was  the  result  ?  Why,  people  were  mad 
to  get  it.  They  would  have  it.  The  very  idea 
that  in  a  free  country  they  were  not  allowed  to 
buy  anything  they  wanted!  Was  this  Maine 
with  a  prohibitive  law  on  something  the  people 
really  wanted? 

And  all  this  time  the  editor  of  the  Daily 
Howler  kept  on  increasing  his  edition,  and  all 
the  time  Mr.  Wise  went  on  buying  sawdust  and 
cheap  molasses  until  he  had  a  whole  county  in 
Northern  New  York  heaped  high  with  it  and 


22          I've  Been  Thinking 

five  large  mills  hard  at  work  compressing  it 
into  cakes. 

And  at  last,  seemingly  on  account  of  the 
pressure  of  public  opinion,  but  really  because 
the  advertising  man  said  it  was  high  time,  Mr. 
Wise  put  an  advertisement  on  the  first  page  of 
the  Daily  Howler  to  the  effect  that  Sord  Ust 
was  a  breakfast  food,  and  that  all  you  need  do 
to  it  was  to  pour  a  little  hot  milk  on  it;  and  if 
your  grocer  wouldn't  get  it  for  you  change  your 
grocer  at  once! 

Was  it  a  success? 

Well,  I  guess. 

Why,  they  had  one  long  freight  train  stretch- 
ing from  the  mills  to  New  York,  moving  all  the 
time  on  a  special  track,  and  as  fast  as  a  car  was 
unloaded  at  the  Manhattan  end  a  car  was  filled 
at  the  other  end. 

Motive  power?    Electricity,  of  course. 

And  the  man  became  a  millionaire  ten  times 
over  before  the  year  was  up  and  before  the 


I've  Been  Thinking          23 

Sord  Ust  had  kicked  up  any  racket  in  the  insides 
of  the  populace. 

And  now  the  advertising  man  began  to  adver- 
tise in  all  the  papers,  and  the  Daily  Howler 
came  before  its  millions  of  subscribers  with 
murders  and  editorials  once  more,  and  they, 
after  their  long  fast,  were  only  too  glad  to  learn 
that  the  world  was  not  as  good  as  they  had 
suspected,  and  the  Daily  Howler  was  a  bigger 
success  than  ever. 

But  the  editor  had  got  the  tip,  and  he  didn't 
use  Sord  Ust  on  his  home  menu. 

And  he's  alive  yet. 


ARE  you  socially  your  husband's  inferior  or 
his  superior? 

If  you  are  his  inferior  he  is  probably  too 
much  of  a  gentleman  to  have  told  you  so,  but 
if  you  are  his  superior  I  am  very  much  afraid 
that  you  have  let  him  know  it. 


24          I've  Been  Thinking 

But  if  you  are  and  if  you  have,  don't  let  it 
rest  at  that.  Try  by  all  the  means  in  your 
power  to  lift  him  up  to  your  social  level.  If 
your  table  manners  are  better  than  his;  if  you 
cannot  eat  a  dinner  without  the  use  of  from 
two  to  three  forks,  while  he  is  prone  to  get  along 
without  any,  try  to  educate  him.  If  he  won't 
use  three  compromise  on  one.  That  will  be  a 
beginning. 

It  will  be  a  great  pity  if  you  let  him  drag 
you  down  to  his  level.  It  is  always  a  pity  when 
a  man  or  a  woman  coasts  from  birth  instead  of 
climbing  from  birth.  Let  your  motto  be,  "Ever 
upward."  Don't  you  want  to  be  superior 
socially  to  anyone  on  earth?  How  can  you 
become  so  if  you  do  not  climb  and  drag  your 
husband  along  too? 

Lift  him  up  and  teach  your  children  to  be  a 
little  better  than  either  of  you.  This  will  not 
be  hard,  as  they  already  feel  they  are  —  that 
is,  if  they  are  good  Americans.  If  they  are 


I've  Been  Thinking          25 

Chinese  they  are  becomingly  humble  and  think 
that  the  sun  rises  and  sets  in  you  and  your 
husband.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  your  children 
are  not  Chinese.  They  want  to  move  on  a 
higher  social  plane  than  you  moved,  and  on  a 
much  higher  plane  than  their  father  moves. 

And  when  they  have  reached  what  they  have 
striven  for,  just  use  them  to  pull  you  and  your 
husband  up  and  the  end  of  your  family  will  be 
some  Blue  Book. 

It's  a  great  ambition. 


I  THINK  it  was  Zangwill  who  said  that,  like 
a  poet,  a  gentleman  was  born,  not  made. 
The  same  aphorism  can  be  applied  to  the  oppo- 
site sex.    A  true  lady  is  born,  not  made. 

Being  born  a  lady  she  can  be  improved  by 
education  and  by  refining  influences,  but  she 
will  not  suddenly  begin  to  be  a  lady,  she  will 
always  have  been  one ;  while  if  she  was  not  born 


26          I've  Been  Thinking 

a  lady  no  amount  of  education  or  refinement  or 
stimulating  environment  will  make  her  a  true 
lady. 

She  may  educate  herself  to  become  a  very 
passable  imitation  of  a  lady  by  cultivating  her 
sense  of  her  obligations  to  her  brothers  and 
sisters  in  this  world. 

She  may  act  the  part  so  often  and  so  well  that 
after  a  time  she  will  convince  people  that  she 
is  a  lady ;  but  if  she  only  takes  the  trouble  to  be 
born  one,  if  she  will  only  choose  for  her  ancestors 
kindly,  unselfish  people,  she  will  be  apt  to  start 
her  life  with  the  chief  requisites,  and  then,  no 
matter  what  her  education  may  or  may  not  be, 
her  heart  will  every  day  incline  her  to  ladylike 
actions  and  people  will  say  when  she  dies,  "She 
was  a  true  woman  if  ever  there  was  one." 

And  to  be  a  true  woman  is  to  be  the  best 
possible  kind  of  lady. 


I've  Been  Thinking          27 

I  HEARD  a  beautiful  story  the  other  day 
about  an  afflicted  father,  a  loving  daughter, 
and  a  piano. 

It  seems  that  the  father  had  long  wished  his 
daughter  to  become  a  proficient  performer  on 
the  piano,  and  the  daughter,  distrusting  her 
own  capabilities,  had  made  up  her  mind  that 
she  could  never  play  well  enough  to  make  her 
devotion  of  hours  and  hours  of  practise  worth 
while. 

Suddenly,  and  almost  without  warning,  her 
father  was  stricken  with  blindness,  and  then  the 
daughter,  taking  a  leaf  out  of  Dickens,  deter- 
mined to  play  Dot  to  his  Caleb,  and  with  that 
in  view  she  bought  a  piano  player  on  the  instal- 
ment plan. 

Her  father  had  been  away  for  some  weeks 
when  the  automatic  player  came  to  the  house, 
and  upon  his  return  she  said  to  him:  "Father, 
dear,  would  you  like  to  hear  some  music?" 


28          I've  Been  Thinking 

And  her  father  said,  "I  would  indeed, 
daughter,  if  you  can  play  some  for  me.  I 
want  to  see  if  you  have  improved  during  my 
absence." 

So  the  old  gentleman  sat  himself  down  on 
the  sofa  and  turned  his  ear  toward  the  piano, 
and  the  daughter  put  a  Hungarian  Rhapsody 
by  Liszt  in  its  place  and  started  the  mechanism. 

When  she  came  to  an  end  her  father  called 
her  to  him  and  kissed  her  upon  her  forehead 
and  patted  her  cheek  and  said:  "What  a  dear 
little  thing  it  is  and  how  much  it  loves  to  please 
its  papa.  Paderewski  might  interpret  it  differ- 
ently but  he  could  not  play  it  any  faster." 

And  while  the  daughter's  pride  and  her  con- 
science were  having  it  out  between  them,  her 
father  said:  "Daughter,  I  too  have  a  surprise." 

He  turned  toward  her  and  continued.  "While 
in  New  York  I  visited  an  oculist  and  I  can  now 
see  as  well  as  I  ever  could.  How  much  do  you 
have  to  pay  a  month  for  the  thing?" 


I've  Been  Thinking          29 

HE  was  a  coward.  No  man  save  himself 
knew  it  for  he  had  been  fortunate 
enough  to  keep  the  knowledge  of  it  from  others. 
But  he  knew  that  he  was  a  coward. 

He  admired  bravery  in  other  men.  He  read 
tales  of  heroes  with  keen  pleasure  and  he  wished 
that  the  gods  had  given  him  the  quality  of  cour- 
age. But  he  was  nevertheless  a  coward. 

When  the  Spanish  war  broke  out  he  saw  his 
friends  go  to  the  front  and  he  envied  them. 
They  will  do  brave  deeds  and  be  admired  of 
men,  thought  he,  but  I  who  am  a  coward  must 
stay  at  home  with  the  women. 

And  he  loved  a  girl  and  was  loved  in  return 
by  her.  And  she  did  not  know  that  he  was  a 
coward.  But  well  he  knew  that  he  was. 

And  as  the  weeks  went  by  and  much  fighting 
had  been  done  and  yet  he  had  not  offered  up 
his  manhood  for  the  cause  his  sweetheart  grew 
impatient  and  asked  him  what  kept  him  at 


30          I've  Been  Thinking 

home.  And  he  could  not  answer  her.  For  he 
would  not  admit  that  he  was  a  coward  save  to 
himself. 

Then  as  she  importuned  him  to  go  he  weighed 
his  chances.  If  I  go,  said  he,  I  may  not  see 
actual  service,  but  she  cannot  twit  me  with  cow- 
ardice. I  will  risk  it  for  my  soul's  peace. 

And  he  enlisted.  And  for  many  months 
fortune  favored  him  and  he  saw  no  active  ser- 
vice. But  yet  his  knees  shook  daily  when  he 
thought  of  the  possibilities  of  the  future. 

And  at  last  he  was  ordered  into  battle,  and 
because  his  moral  cowardice  outweighed  his 
physical  fear  and  he  feared  ridicule  more  than 
he  feared  danger  he  exposed  himself  to  the  fire 
of  the  enemy.  And  he  was  unharmed,  but  his 
fellows  said,  he  is  a  brave  man. 

And  his  first  battle  was  his  last  also,  for  the 
war  ended  on  that  day  and  he  went  home. 
And  the  papers  and  his  comrades  spoke  of 
his  bravery,  and  his  sweetheart  accepted  him 


I've  Been  Thinking          31 

at  his  reputed  valuation  and  they  were  mar- 
ried. 

But  his  life  was  embittered,  for  he  hated  hy- 
pocrisy and  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  knew  that 
he  was  still  a  coward. 


HAVE  you  a  meek  husband? 
Don't  bullyrag  him. 

Remember  that  even  if  you  did  omit  the 
"honor  and  obey"  clause  in  the  marriage  service 
you  were  made  partners,  and  as  he  probably 
suggested  the  partnership  in  the  first  place  he 
has  some  rights. 

If  you  must  bullyrag  him  be  sure  that  you 
do  it  in  the  quiet  (or  tumult)  of  your  own  home. 
This  baiting  of  a  husband  in  public,  while  it 
may  afford  food  for  laughter  on  the  part  of  the 
groundlings,  can  but  make  the  judicious  grieve. 

A  large  woman  leading  around  a  small  puppy 
is  always  a  ridiculous  sight. 


32          I've  Been  Thinking 

If  you  make  a  puppy  of  your  husband  and 
accompany  him  out  of  evenings,  remember  that 
some  of  the  after-laughter  will  be  expended 
upon  you. 

If  he  is  a  puppy  feed  him  well,  treat  him 
kindly  —  and  perhaps  he  will  become  a  jolly 
dog. 

But  do  not  live  a  comic  supplement  life  with 
him,  because  the  comic  paper  habit  is  so  general 
in  this  country  and  the  types  are  so  firmly 
grounded  in  the  minds  of  even  the  young  that 
you  will  be  recognized  at  sight,  and  depend 
upon  it,  all  the  sympathy  will  go  out  to  the 
(under)  dog. 

Perhaps  you  are  intellectual  and  your  husband 
is  not.  Don't  twit  him  with  your  college 
education. 

When  you  come  right  down  to  it,  if  he  never 
went  to  college,  you  have  forgotten  most  of 
what  you  learned  there,  and  so  you  are  not  in 
a  position  to  snub  him  as  unmercifully  as  you  do. 


I've  Been  Thinking          33 

No  doubt  your  mind  was  disciplined  by  the 
very  things  you  have  forgotten,  but  remember 
that,  "while  it  is  excellent  to  have  a  giant's 
strength  it  is  tyrannous  to  use  it  like  a  giant." 
Lead  your  husband  up.  Don't  beat  him  down. 


HAVE  you  an  allowance? 
If  your  husband  is  a  salaried  man  he 
ought  to  give  you  an  allowance,  because  it  is  to 
be  supposed  that  you  do  your  share  of  the  work 
that  goes  to  the  making  of  home  and  you  are 
therefore  a  partner  in  the  concern. 

If  your  husband  is  an  artist  or  a  musician  or 
a  writer  and  is  dependent  on  his  skill  in  dis- 
posing of  his  work,  that  is  to  say,  if  he  is  without 
a  regular  salary,  you  can  hardly  expect  him  to 
give  you  an  allowance ;  but  you  should  make  no 
bones  of  asking  him  for  what  you  need,  because, 
again,  you  are  partners. 

Your  husband  is  not  a  little  tin  god  on  wheels. 


34          I've  Been  Thinking 

His  money  is  your  money,  and  you  may 
depend  upon  it  that  if  you  were  earning  and 
he  was  housekeeping  he  would  cheerfully  and 
promptly  ask  you  for  money  as  he  needed  it. 

I  have  known  wives  who  asked  as  a  favor 
what  was  theirs  by  right. 

Of  course  if  you  are  merely  the  fine  lady  with 
no  responsibilities;  if  you  are  a  member  of  this 
and  of  that  club  and  spend  your  time  in  writing 
papers  on  the  bringing  up  of  other  people's 
children  while  your  own  are  brought  up  with 
a  round  turn  (eventually),  you  have  no  right  to 
ask  your  husband  for  money.  You  are  no 
longer  a  partner  in  the  concern.  He  is  the 
whole  thing  and  he  may  do  as  he  pleases  with 
his  hard  earned  money. 

Or  if  you  are  extravagant  and  for  your  sins 
your  husband  has  kept  a  tight  hand  on  the 
purse,  I  have  nothing  to  say.  It  is  not  pleasant 
to  see  money  laboriously  earned  gaily  dispersed, 
as  if  the  fact  of  spending  it  generated  more. 


I've  Been  Thinking          35 

But  if  you  know  that  you  are  healthily 
economical,  and  if  your  husband  is  doing  well, 
why,  ask  him  this  evening  when  he  comes  home. 
Wait  until  he  has  dined  (and  see  that  the  dinner 
is  a  good  one).  Then  when  he  is  smoking  his 
cigar  just  tell  him  how  you  were  admitted  into 
the  partnership  when  you  were  married  to  him, 
and  that  hereafter  he  will  please  see  to  it  that 
you  have  a  decent  allowance. 

Of  course  you  must  dress  up  your  request  in 
what  diplomatic  robes  are  at  your  command. 
Don't  use  a  "stand  and  deliver"  attitude  or  he 
may  call  in  the  constabulary. 

But  if  he  allows  the  allowance  don't  thank 
me,  rather  laugh  at  yourself  for  not  having  had 
spirit  enough  to  ask  it  before. 

It's  yours  by  right. 


36          I've  Been  Thinking 

MRS.  WORTHING,  Mrs.  Gregory 
Worthing,  said  to  me  the  other  day: 

"I  cannot  understand  why  it  is  that  so 
many  mothers  think  their  ducks  are  swans. 
Now  there's  Mrs.  Brown,  always  boasting 
about  the  rapid  progress  that  her  Dorothy 
has  made  in  music,  and  my  Ethel  who  did 
not  begin  until  a  term  later  plays  a  great  deal 
better. 

"Different  mothers  boast  of  different  things," 
she  went  on,  "but  almost  all  but  myself  boast 
about  something  in  their  children,  and  for  my 
part  I  think  the  children  in  this  place  are  very 
ordinary.  Gregory  carries  himself  very  much 
better  than  most  children,  because  I  insisted 
upon  his  going  in  to  New  York  to  take  dancing 
lessons  when  he  was  not  eight,  but  the  average 
boy  of  to-day  is  awfully  slouchy.  And  yet  I 
heard  Mrs.  Harrison  talking  about  her  son 
Arthur  being  as  straight  as  an  Indian  and  that 


I've  Been  Thinking          37 

he  got  it  from  his  father.  Fancy,  that  under- 
sized little  John  Harrison! 

"And  Mrs.  Winslow  says  that  Barbara  sews 
remarkably  well  for  a  girl  of  ten,  and  she  is 
always  showing  me  the  last  thing  she  has  done. 
Why,  Ethel  sewed  well  naturally.  I  never 
taught  her  a  stitch,  but  she  does  all  my  towel 
hemming  now.  But  I  never  would  think  of 
boasting  of  it. 

"And  the  other  day  I  happened  to  say  that 
Gregory  had  quite  a  correct  ear,  and  that  now 
that  his  voice  had  changed  he  sang  better 
than  any  of  the  boys  in  the  choir,  and  that 
was  enough  for  Mrs.  Demock.  She  began, 
and  she  talked  and  talked  about  the  beauty 
of  Clement's  voice,  and  said  that  he  took  after 
her.  Absolute  conceit,  and  yet  she  never  imag- 
ined for  a  moment  that  I  noticed  it.  Now, 
with  Gregory,  his  singing  comes  perfectly 
natural,  because  I  have  always  sung,  and  in 
fact  when  I  was  a  girl  I  used  to  be  always 


38          I've  Been  Thinking 

asked  to  sing  in  company,  but  when  I  married 
I  gave  it  up." 

When  I  remembered  that  to  my  unprejudiced 
eyes  Gregory  was  a  good-natured  hobbledehoy 
and  Ethel  a  kind-hearted  but  hopelessly  com- 
monplace child,  I  couldn't  help  wondering  with 
Mrs.  Worthing  why  it  is  that  so  many  mothers 
think  their  ducks  are  swans. 


IF  there  is  a  boy  that  I  admire  in  the  suburb 
in  which  I  live,  which  suburb  is  in  Connec- 
ticut, by  the  way,  it  is  Tom  Bingham.  He  is 
tall  and  sturdy  and  good  tempered  and  a  favor- 
ite with  boys  and  girls;  he  has  a  well  developed 
sense  of  humor  and  I  never  meet  him  but  I 
find  that  we  two  have  a  good  deal  in  common, 
in  spite  of  our  fifty  years'  disparity. 

The  other  evening  I  went  into  town  in  the 
same  car  with  his  mother  and  father  and  I  had 


I've  Been  Thinking          39 

quite  a  chat  with  Mrs.  Bingham,  who  is  very 
different  from  Mrs.  Worthing. 

Our  subject  was  children,  and  I  confessed  to 
her  that  I  was  clean  discouraged  about  my  boy 
Harry;  that  it  did  seem  as  if  all  my  talking  and 
advice  and  splendid  example  since  he  was  born 
had  been  thrown  away  on  him,  and  that  he 
seemed  more  thoughtless  and  hopeless  every 
day. 

"Why,  I'm  perfectly  astonished  to  hear  you 
say  so,"  she  said.  "I  was  telling  Mr.  Bingham 
only  last  night  that  if  there  was  a  manly,  well 
brought  up  boy  in  the  place  it  was  your  Harry, 
and  he  agreed  with  me.  Dear  me !  if  you  had 
such  a  chap  as  Tom  to  bring  up  you  might  well 
despair.  I  sometimes  wonder  whether  we'll 
ever  get  any  credit  for  having  tried  to  bring  him 
up  in  the  way  he  should  go." 

"Why,  Mrs.  Bingham,  surely  you  are  jok- 
ing," said  I.  "Your  son  Tom  is  the  one  boy 
in  town  that  I  think  is  a  credit  to  his  parents. 


40          I've  Been  Thinking 

He  always  lifts  his  cap  when  he  meets  me;  the 
other  day  I  saw  him  helping  the  washerwoman 
over  a  bad  place  on  the  icy  pavement,  and  I 
know  that  he  is  a  great  favorite  with  the  other 
boys  —  and  girls,  too.  I  don't  believe  you 
know  your  boy  Tom  at  all." 

And  then  it  came  over  me  like  a  thunder 
clap,  "Do  I  know  my  boy  Harry?  Does  he 
show  off  his  best  points  at  home?" 

And  it  struck  me  that  perhaps  Mrs.  Bingham 
and  I  were  better  off  in  our  sons  than  either  of 
us  imagined. 


I  ONCE  knew  a  millionaire  who  always  car- 
ried his  money  around  with  him  in  bills. 
There  were  some  dollar  bills,  more  ten-dollar 
bills,  and  many  hundred  and  thousand-dollar 
bills.  He  always  carried  them  in  a  suit  case 
with  an  ordinary  lock  and  key,  and  he  told  me 


I've  Been  Thinking          41 

that  he  was  happy  just  because  he  had  the 
actual  money. 

His  brother  hardly  ever  handled  money  at 
all.  He  was  a  millionaire,  too,  but  he  did  all 
his  business  with  checks  and  seldom  had 
more  than  twenty  dollars  on  his  person,  and 
he  was  miserable  and  dyspeptic. 

I  understood  the  feeling  of  the  moneyed 
millionaire  better  than  that  of  the  checked 
one.  The  first  man  was  not  a  miser;  he  was 
simply  a  grown-up  child,  with  a  child's  de- 
light in  actually  seeing  the  money  that  he  had 
earned  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  most  of  it  at 
a  dollar  a  day.  Don't  stop  to  figure  out  how 
many  days  he  had  worked,  or  I  won't  wait. 

Now,  of  course,  there  are  persons  of  imagina- 
tion who  can  go  through  life  using  checks  and 
feeling  rich,  but  it  takes  a  good  deal  of  imagi- 
nation to  do  so,  and  for  me  the  pretty  green 
ten-dollar  bill  means  ten  times  as  much  as 
the  check  for  ten  dollars. 


42          I've  Been  Thinking 

Of  course,  checks  have  their  uses,  and  I 
use  them  myself.  When  a  bill  for  some  prosaic 
thing,  like  repairs  to  the  coal  chute,  comes  in 
I  send  out  a  check  in  payment,  but  if  I  am 
buying  a  book  that  I  have  long  coveted,  you 
may  be  sure  that  I  hand  out  real  money  for  it. 
The  book  represents  something  tangible,  and 
I  will  not  insult  the  book  dealer  by  sending 
him  a  cold,  unfeeling  check. 

If  I  wanted  to  bring  happiness  to  a  widow 
whose  husband  had  died  leaving  her  desti- 
tute, do  you  think  that  I  would  send  her  a 
check  for  a  thousand  dollars?  If  you  do, 
you  don't  know  me. 

If  I  were  going  to  do  the  thing  at  all  I  would 
go  to  her  house  with  one  thousand  crisp  dollar 
bills,  and  I  would  receive  her  thanks  for  each 
one.  But  it  is  a  queer  thing  about  gratitude. 
Her  thanks  for  the  first  bill  would  be  heart- 
felt, but  by  the  time  I  had  reached  the  first 
hundred  she  would  have  grown  tired  of  thank- 


I've  Been  Thinking         43 

ing  me,  and  I  verily  believe  that  before  I  had 
handed  in  the  last  bill  she  would  have  asked 
me  if  I  couldn't  be  a  little  more  expeditious. 
Thus  usage  dulls  the  senses. 

On  the  other  hand,  do  you  suppose  that  if 
I  were  sued  for  a  thousand  dollars  I  would  pay 
the  complainant  in  good  green  money?  No,  a 
thousand  times  no.  I  would  purposely  buy  the 
smallest  blank  check  that  I  could  find,  and  in 
my  most  minute  chirography,  and  with  an  auto- 
graph that  was  barely  good,  I  would  sign  it,  and 
thus  I  would  feel  that  I  was  getting  off  cheap. 

In  some  things  most  of  us  are  intensely 
mean,  and  among  the  expenditures  that  offend 
men's  souls  are  those  paid  into  a  railroad  com- 
pany's grasping  maw.  I  hold  myself  no  better 
than  the  rest,  and,  if  possible,  I  always  travel 
in  company  with  another,  and  before  we  start 
out  I  give  him  money  to  cover  the  expenses, 
and  then  he  buys  the  tickets  and  I  feel  that  I 
have  not  spent  so  much. 


44          I've  Been  Thinking 

But  in  buying  stationery,  and  books,  and 
pictures,  I  never  think  of  intrusting  the  busi- 
ness to  another.  Let  me  pick  out  my  own 
paper,  find  my  own  book,  be  my  own  judge  of 
the  picture,  and,  when  they  are  ready  to  de- 
liver, let  me  pay  the  bill  myself  in  coin  of  the 
realm. 

Your  plumber  should  always  receive  a 
check,  but  the  man  who  entertains  you  should 
get  good  gold,  even  if  it  is  only  fifty  cents' 
worth. 

One  objection  I  have  to  royalties  is  that 
they  always  come  in  the  form  of  a  check  — 
when  they  come  at  all.  One  time,  though, 
my  publisher  varied  it;  instead  of  sending  a 
check  he  sent  a  bill.  You  see  I  had  given  at 
least  ten  copies  of  the  book  at  Christmas  time, 
and,  of  course,  the  balance  was  in  his  favor. 
Do  you  know,  I  really  enjoyed  the  thing  for  a 
change. 

By  the  way,  that  receiving  of  royalties,  even 


I've  Been  Thinking          45 

if  they  are  paid  in  check  form,  is  a  very  good 
game.  You  sell  your  stories  for  so  much,  and 
then,  when  they  are  all  printed,  you  are  in- 
duced to  make  a  book  of  them.  Well,  you 
have  already  been  paid  for  them,  so  that  you 
stand  to  gain,  whatever  happens.  It  may  be 
only  ten  dollars  that  will  come  to  you,  but  it 
may  be  ten  thousand,  and  the  joy  of  looking 
forward  to  royalty  day  is  one  that  cannot  be 
expressed  in  words.  You  do  not  hear  much 
about  the  sale  of  your  book;  your  friends  say 
nothing  about  it,  but  perhaps  they  are  keeping 
its  phenomenal  success  a  secret  from  you. 
You  live  in  the  country,  and  you  never  see  the 
Bookman,  so  you  do  not  know  what  the  six 
best  sellers  are,  but  you  have  your  suspicions. 
At  last  the  fateful  day  arrives,  the  familiar 
envelope  of  your  publisher  comes  to  you  by 
mail,  and  as  you  open  it  a  check  flutters  out. 
You  remember  the  stories  of  du  Maurier  and 
"Trilby,"  and  how  his  publishers  sent  him 


46          I've  Been  Thinking 

several  thousands  over  and  above  the  contract 
agreement. 

To  be  sure,  it  is  only  a  check,  and  not  money, 
but,  after  all,  any  bank  will  convert  a  check 
into  money  if  you  are  known,  and  your  book 
has  doubtless  made  you  known  through  the 
wide  world. 

You  pick  up  the  check  and  close  your  eyes, 
until  you  are  holding  it  right  in  front  of  them. 
"The  Second  National  Bank  of  New  York. 
Pay  to  the  order  of  yourself  $47.50.  Harp, 
Scrib.  &  Co." 

It  isn't  quite  what  you  thought  it  would  be. 
The  book  is  not  one  of  the  six  —  yet.  Still, 
after  the  first  disappointment  is  over,  you  re- 
flect that  it  is  all  clear  gain,  and  you  go  to  the 
bank  and  have  it  converted  into  new  dollar 
bills,  and  then  you  go  down  to  the  bookstore 
and  you  buy  thirty  odd  books  that  you  have 
wanted  for  years. 

No,  you  don't.    You  know  very  well  you 


I've  Been  Thinking         47 

don't,  for  the  same  mail  that  brought  the 
check  brought  its  antithesis  in  the  form  of  a 
bill  from  the  gentleman  who  raised  the  price 
of  beef  on  you,  and  the  other  gentleman  who 
charged  you  eight  dollars  a  ton  for  coal,  and 
like  a  good  little  man  you  sit  down  and  you 
write  out  two  checks  which  take  up  forty-two 
of  the  dollars. 

But  take  my  advice,  and  get  the  better  of 
fortune  by  taking  the  five-fifty  that  is  left  — 
and  your  wife  —  and  going  into  town  for  a 
jamboree.  Remember  that  a  jamboree,  small 
though  it  be,  remains  in  the  memory  long  after 
the  memory  of  a  paid  bill  has  left  you. 

Pay  the  bills,  but  save  enough  out  of  the 
cost  of  your  clothes  for  a  little  jamboree. 
Clothes  warm  the  body,  but  jamborees  warm 
the  cockles  of  the  heart,  and  a  man  who  neglects 
the  cockles  of  the  heart  to  put  Jaeger  under- 
wear on  his  lusty  limbs  has  failed  in  his  duty 
toward  himself  —  and  his  better  half. 


48          I've  Been  Thinking 

"  /CHILDREN  aren't  as  respectful  as  they 

\^>l  were  when  I  was  a  child." 

How  can  you  say  that  and  keep  a  straight 
face? 

Don't  you  remember  hearing  your  Uncle 
John  say  that  very  thing  when  you  were  about 
eight?  He  had  come  down  from  Maine  to 
visit  you,  and  while  you  liked  him,  you  felt  a 
little  free  with  him  and  said  something  that 
brought  forth  his  remark. 

And  if  the  truth  might  be  got  at,  Uncle 
John  had  a  similar  experience  when  he  was 
a  boy.  His  uncle  went  up  to  Maine  from 
Boston  to  visit  and  your  Uncle  John  made 
some  flippant  remark  that  caused  him  to  say 
that  the  disrespect  of  modern  children  (re- 
member that  it  is  always  modern  times  to  the 
man  who  is  speaking  even  when  you  get  back 
to  the  days  of  Rehoboam)  —  he  said  that  the 
disrespect  of  modern  children  was  something 


I've  Been  Thinking         49 

awful.  Why,  when  he  was  a  boy,  children 
were  brought  up  to  be  silent  —  utterly  for- 
getting that  his  father  flogged  him  for  dis- 
respect, 'way  back  before  Warren  fell  at  Bunker 
Hill,  and  while  he  was  flogging  him  he  deplored 
the  evil  days  on  which  they  had  fallen.  It  had 
been  so  different  when  he  was  a  boy.  Children 
then  were  always  respectful. 

In  fact  this  remark  translated  into  different 
languages  goes  back  to  the  time  of  Adam  and 
he,  for  manifest  reasons,  could  not  make  it. 

But  he  is  the  only  one  who  couldn't  and 
didn't. 


THE  editor  was  getting  up  his  Christmas 
issue,  or,  to  be  more  exact,  he  was 
thinking  of  getting  it  up,  and  as  he  lolled  lazily 
in  his  hammock  and  watched  the  shadows  of 
the  July  clouds  chasing  each  other  over  the 
distant  hills  he  wondered  whether  he  could  not 


50          I've  Been  Thinking 

strike  a  new  note  in  Christmas  issues  —  some- 
thing that  would  appeal  to  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  in  the  land  and  cause  them  to  tumble 
over  each  other  in  their  eagerness  to  buy  his 
magazine. 

The  shadows  lengthened  in  the  grass,  the 
hum  of  the  insects  lost  the  help  of  the  bees, 
who  had  ceased  their  work  and  gone  to  rest, 
and  from  the  house  within  came  the  tinkle  of 
a  silvery  bell  that  told  him  supper  was  served. 

But  he  did  not  move,  and  at  last  his  wife 
came  to  the  door  and,  fanning  her  face  with 
her  apron,  said:  "John,  everything  is  getting 
hot  from  standing.  Do  come  in." 

He  bounded  from  his  hammock. 

"I  have  it,  Mary,  dear!  I  have  it!  I  will 
have  a  Christmas  issue  that  will  leave  all  others 
in  the  rear.  It  will  be  the  first  of  its  kind,  and 
I  fully  expect  our  sales  to  be  increased  a  hun- 
dred-fold." 

And  then  he  told  her  of  his  scheme. 


I've  Been  Thinking        51 

"We  will  bring  out  the  magazine  on  Christ- 
mas Eve,  and  from  beginning  to  end  there 
will  not  be  a  single  mention  of  Christmas 
except  on  the  cover." 

"Well,  but  people  will  be  expecting  Christ- 
mas stuff." 

"What!  Expecting?  Yes;  they  will  be  ex- 
pecting it.  You're  right;  and  that's  where 
we'll  win.  They  won't  get  it.  They  will  have 
had  Christmas  issues  from  early  in  November, 
and  when  they  realize  that  they  can  spend  the 
25th  of  December  reading  a  magazine  that  has 
absolutely  no  hint  of  an  overworked  holiday 
in  it  they  will  buy  it  and  send  it  to  their  friends 
all  over  the  world.  Fold  me  to  your  bosom, 
little  wife,  for  I  have  at  last  hit  on  a  money- 
maker!" 

His  little  wife  folded  him  to  her  bosom,  but 
it  was  such  warm  weather  that  he  asked  her 
to  unfold  him,  and  she  unfolded  him  right 
away,  because  the  way  they  preserved  har- 


52          I've  Been  Thinking 

mony  in  the  family  was  by  minding  each  other 
at  once,  always. 

Next  day  he  went  to  the  hot  city  and  told 
his  associates  of  his  plan  and  they  were 
aghast. 

"W-h-a-t!"  said  they.  "Nothing  about  little 
tots  and  their  stockings?  Not  a  word  as  to 
the  origin  of  the  Christmas  legend?  Nothing 
about  the  genial,  jovial  old  saint  ?  No  Dickens 
story  rehashed?  No  peace  and  good-will  by 
the  yard?  Not  a  yule  log  nor  a  reference  to 
mistletoe  and  the  old  maid  aunt  ?  Why,  Puffer, 
you're  daffy!" 

But  if  Puffer  was  daffy  he  was  also  editor, 
and  what  he  said  went. 

Oh,  how  happy  the  typesetters  were  when 
they  learned  that  they  would  have  to  spell 
Christmas  but  once ! 

And  if  they  were  happy,  think  how  more 
than  happy  the  poets  were  who  were  told  that 
no  stuff  would  be  accepted  that  hinted  at  the 


I've  Been  Thinking          53 

glad  season,  and  that  stockings  were  barred, 
whatever  their  pattern. 

And  the  sketch  and  story  writers.  They 
came  to  Mr.  Puffer  with  tears  in  their  eyes 
and  said  to  him:  "You  have  saved  our  lives. 
Now  we  can  write  with  enthusiasm.  We  had 
begun  to  hate  Santa  Claus  and  we  hated  to 
hate  him,  for  he  is  such  a  nice  old  fellow;  but 
we  have  had  to  ring  so  many  changes  on  him 
that  the  sight  of  a  snowy  beard  and  ruddy 
cheeks  makes  us  pessimistic." 

And  the  artists.  Really  it  was  hard  to  stop 
the  artists  from  drawing  chimneys  and  rein- 
deers. The  announcement  that  a  Christmas 
number  was  on  the  stocks  had  always  meant  so 
many  prancing  deer  and  so  many  barefooted, 
nightgowned  tots,  and  more  than  one  artist 
turned  in  pictures  of  midsummer  sheep  warm- 
ing their  fleeces  at  yule  logs  instead  of  gambol- 
ing on  sunny  hillsides. 

And  the  public.    Well,  it  was  even  as  Mr. 


54          I've  Been  Thinking 

Puffer  had  prophesied.  At  first  they  would 
not  believe  that  there  was  such  a  magazine, 
and  so  they  bought  it  to  make  sure.  And  it 
was  full  of  stories  about  every  day  in  the  year 
but  Christmas,  and  the  cover  had  clover  and 
clematis  on  it,  and  little  naked  boys  in  swim- 
ming under  a  summer  sky.  Oh,  it  was  a  great 
success,  and  for  seven  days  the  printing  of  it 
went  on,  and  when  New  Year's  Day  came 
Mr.  Puffer  got  a  six  months'  leave  of  ab- 
sence and  went  with  his  wife  to  travel  in 
foreign  lands,  and  when  they  returned  they 
found  out  that  every  editor  in  America  had 
taken  a  leaf  out  of  Mr.  Puffer's  book  and  was 
going  to  bring  out  a  Christmas-less  Christmas 
number. 

So  Mr.  Puffer  laid  low  and  said  nothing 
to  his  brother  editors,  but,  being  now  a  very 
rich  man,  he  invited  a  large  number  of  writers 
and  artists  up  to  his  summer  place,  and  told 
them  to  write  when  they  pleased  and  draw 


I've  Been  Thinking          55 

when  they  pleased,  but  to  try  to  bend  their 
energies  to  the  making  up  of  the  only  Christ- 
mas magazine  in  America. 

And  taking  it  that  way  in  the  middle  of  sum- 
mer in  a  delightful  place,  they  found  they  could 
think  of  Christmas  without  distaste,  and  they 
set  to  and  planned  the  best  Christmas  number 
that  had  ever  been  thought  of. 

And  now  the  public  prints  contained  no 
mention  of  Christmas,  and  people  began  to 
sort  of  yearn  for  the  pretty  stories  and  the 
wintry  yule-loggy  pictures,  and  by  the  time 
Christmas  Day  came  they  were  positively 
hungry  for  them. 

And  that  is  why  Mr.  Puffer's  Christmas 
issue,  full  of  Christmas  stories  and  pictures, 
beat  all  records.  Its  circulation  was  only 
five  or  six  short  of  sixteen  millions. 

And  Mr.  Puffer  made  so  much  money  that 
he  and  his  wife  have  been  traveling  ever  since, 
and  they  always  spend  Christmas  in  the  city 


56          I've  Been  Thinking 

where  St.  Nicholas  was  born,  and  they  hang 
up  their  stockings  and  go  through  the  motions 
and  emotions,  because  there's  a  good  deal  in 
that  Christmas  spirit,  if  you  don't  get  too 
much  of  it. 


THERE  are  mornings  that  invite  women 
who  live  in  or  near  the  country  to  go 
out  and  take  a  walk. 

Those  are  the  very  mornings  when  stockings 
need  to  be  darned  or  shelves  need  to  be  dusted 
or  perhaps  floors  need  to  be  swept. 

Now  there  is  no  question  but  that  a  plain 
duty  lies  before  these  women  thus  early  in  the 
morning. 

Will  the  woman  go  out  and  breathe  the  morn- 
ing air  and  fill  her  eyes  with  nature's  paintings 
or  will  she  resolutely  sit  down  to  her  darning 
or  stand  up  to  her  dusting  and  sweeping? 

Woman,  learn  to  do  your  whole  duty  in  this 


I've  Been  Thinking          57 

matter.  Do  not  be  swayed  by  foolish  prompt- 
ings; do  not  say,  "It  will  not  make  any  differ- 
ence if  I  do  it  just  this  once.  I  can  do  the 
other  thing  later." 

It  will  make  a  great  deal  of  difference.  It 
will  make  a  difference  to  your  children  and 
to  your  husband.  It  may  be  their  stockings 
that  you  are  darning  or  his  desk  that  you  are 
dusting.  It  makes  a  great  deal  of  difference 
whether  you  do  your  duty  or  not  every  morn- 
ing. 

When  you  rise  from  the  breakfast  table 
and  see  the  basket  of  undarned  stockings,  or 
notice  that  you  can  write  your  name  in  the 
dust  that  has  accumulated  since  the  furnace 
was  last  shaken, — when  you  see  these  things 
and  then  look  out  of  the  window,  and  the 
birds  and  the  air  and  the  scene  invite  you  to 
take  a  walk  along  pleasant  paths,  do  your 
duty  by  your  husband  and  your  children  and 
yourself.  Take  the  walk. 


58          I've  Been  Thinking 

CHILD  — Papa,  what  is  a  New  Yorker? 
Papa  —  My  child,  a  New  Yorker  is 
one  who  lives  in  New  York  —  who  has  his 
residence  there.  A  New  Yorker  may  be  a 
Chinaman  from  Pell  Street,  or  a  Polish  Jew 
from  Rivington  Street,  or  a  Syrian  from  Wash- 
ington Street,  or  an  Italian,  from  the  Italian 
quarter,  or  a  Greek  or  Jap  or  Swede  or  any 
nationality  at  all,  provided  he  lives  in  New 
York  City. 

Child  —  Well,  suppose  a  Russian  lives  in 
Brooklyn. 

Papa  —  He  is  a  New  Yorker. 

Child  —  Well,  if  a  Portuguese  lived  in  the 
Bronx  ? 

Papa  —  He  would  be  a  New  Yorker.  Of 
course,  my  child,  in  a  large  sense,  all  inhabi- 
tants of  the  State  of  New  York  are  New  Yorkers, 
but,  generally  speaking,  by  the  term  New 
Yorker  is  meant  one  who  lives  in  the  city  of  New 


I've  Been  Thinking          59 

York,  and  that  is  why  a  Chinaman  out  on 
Staten  Island  is  a  New  Yorker. 

Child  —  Papa,  does  a  man  have  to  be  a 
foreigner  in  order  to  live  in  New  York? 

Papa  —  What  a  question,  my  child.  Of 
course  not.  There  are  many  living  in  New 
York  whose  native  language  is  English. 

Child  —  Oh,  they  were  born  there  ? 

Papa  —  Not  necessarily.  Some  were  born 
in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  and  some  in  the 
British  possessions,  but  they  all  speak  Eng- 
lish and  they  live  in  New  York  and  are  New 
Yorkers. 

Child  —  Then  if  I  understand  you  aright, 
my  dear  father,  a  man  who  lives  in  New  York 
and  who  speaks  English  must  have  been  born 
either  in  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  or  somewhere 
in  the  British  possessions. 

Papa  —  Not  at  all.  There  are  native  Ameri- 
cans who  speak  English  and  who  live  in  New 
York. 


60          I've  Been  Thinking 

Child  —  And  where  are  they  from  ? 

Papa  —  Some  were  born  in  New  England, 
some  on  the  Pacific  coast,  some  in  the  Middle 
West,  and  some  in  the  South. 

Child  —  Then  they  are  the  real  New  Yorkers. 

Papa  —  Not  necessarily.  Any  man  who  lives 
in  New  York  for  any  length  of  time  becomes  a 
New  Yorker,  no  matter  where  he  may  have 
been  born.  When  he  travels  he  registers  from 
New  York. 

Child  —  Is  it  in  the  air? 

Papa  —  It  is  in  the  air.  The  Westerner  de- 
spises New  York  until  he  has  made  a  fortune, 
and  then  he  comes  to  New  York  to  spend  it, 
and  after  that  he  is  a  New  Yorker.  The 
Southerner  who  has  come  to  New  York  to 
live  may  say  that  he  was  born  in  the  South,  and 
if  he  doesn't  his  tongue  will  do  it  for  him,  but 
he  glories  in  being  a  citizen  of  New  York. 
The  New  Englander  feels  that  he  has  honored 
New  York  by  coming  to  it  and  that  without 


I've  Been  Thinking          61 

him  New  York  would  not  amount  to  much, 
but  he,  too,  signs  his  name  in  the  register  as 
from  New  York. 

Child  —  How  about  the  Jerseyman,  papa  ? 

Papa  —  The  Jerseyman  is  an  altogether 
different  proposition.  Six  Jerseymen  out  of 
ten  do  business  in  New  York,  and  of  those  six 
five  were  born  in  Brooklyn  when  she  was  just 
Brooklyn.  The  Jerseyman  is  not,  strictly 
speaking,  a  New  Yorker.  If  New  York  is  in 
disgrace  he  thanks  his  stars  that  he  spends  his 
nights  in  another  State,  but  if  New  York  wins 
a  point  he  pats  himself  on  the  back  and  says: 
-  "I'm  here  most  of  my  waking  time."  The 
Jerseyman  also  is  sorely  tempted  to  sign  his 
name  as  from  New  York  when  he  is  out  in 
Chicago,  for  instance,  and  when  he  is  in  Europe 
he  does  do  it. 

Child  —  Well,  papa,  you  have  told  me  about 
foreigners  who  were  New  Yorkers,  and  about 
English-speaking  people  who  were  New  Yorkers, 


62          I've  Been  Thinking 

and  about  Americans  who  were  New  Yorkers, 
but  I  want  to  know  if  there  couldn't  be  a  more 
perfect  kind  of  New  Yorker  than  any  of  these 
—  one  who  was  born  in  New  York  and  who 
spoke  English? 

Papa  —  Why,  yes,  my  child;  there  are 
thousands  born  in  New  York  who  speak  Eng- 
lish. They  are  hard  and  fast  New  Yorkers. 
Their  parents  were  Germans  and  Italians  and 
Frenchmen  and  Jews  and  Greeks,  but  they 
were  born  in  New  York  and  they  speak  Eng- 
lish. 

Child  —  Then,  papa,  they  are  the  real  New 
Yorkers,  aren't  they? 

Papa  —  Well,  I  believe  that  they  are  con- 
sidered to  be  the  most  patriotic  New  Yorkers 
because  their  New  Yorkism  is  so  new;  but, 
my  child,  in  this  city  of  which  we  are  speak- 
ing, this  city  of  nearly  four  million  inhabitants, 
there  is  a  little  class,  without  much  influence, 
to  be  sure,  but  still  self-respecting  and  respected 


I've  Been  Thinking          63 

by  others,  a  mere  handful,  it  is  true,  but  a  very 
intelligent  handful. 

Child  —  And  who  are  they,  papa  ? 

Papa  —  They,  my  child,  are  the  native 
American  New  Yorkers,  whose  parents  and 
grandparents  and  great-grandparents,  to  the 
third  and  fourth  generation,  were  born  and 
brought  up  in  New  York. 

Child  —  And   who   always   spoke   English  ? 

Papa  —  Well,  no.  They  spoke  Dutch  origi- 
nally, but  they  have  spoken  English  longer  than 
the  majority  of  the  rest.  Those  are  the  real 
New  Yorkers. 

Child  —  I  never  heard  of  them.  Where  do 
they  keep  themselves  ? 

Papa  —  One  of  them  is  the  President  of  the 
United  States. 

Child  —  Oh,  yes,  of  course.  So  he  is  a 
Simon-pure  New  Yorker  ? 

Papa — Well,  no;  come  to  think  of  it,  he  isn't, 
because  I  believe  his  mother  was  a  Southerner. 


64          I've  Been  Thinking 

Child  —  Well,  do  the  Simon-pure  New 
Yorkers  sign  their  names  as  from  New  York? 

Papa  —  Yes,  my  boy,  they  do,  and  they 
would  like  to  be  able  to  sign  in  a  special  colored 
ink  to  make  it  more  emphatic. 

Child  —  Well,  papa,  I  suppose  that  if  they 
could  have  kept  out  the  foreigners  and  the 
English-speaking  aliens  and  the  Yankees  and 
the  Southerners  and  the  Westerners,  and  just 
left  New  York  for  the  real  born  and  bred  New 
Yorkers,  New  York  would  be  even  greater 
than  it  is? 

Papa  —  No,  no,  my  boy.  No  city  ever  gets 
to  the  top  of  the  pile  unaided.  It  is  because 
of  all  these  people  who  have  come  in  to  show 
New  York  how  to  misgovern  itself  that  she  is 
the  greatest  city  on  the  Western  Hemisphere 
and  is  destined  to  be  the  greatest  city  that  the 
sun  ever  shone  upon. 

Child  —  And  what  will  become  of  the  real 
New  York  New  Yorkers? 


I've  Been  Thinking          65 

Papa  —  They  will  disappear  after  a  while. 
Child  — Why,  papa? 

Papa  —  Because    it    is    getting    to    be    the 
fashion  to  be  born  in  the  country. 
Child  — Oh! 


NOW  is  the  time  of  year  when,  as  Chaucer 
said,  "longen  folk  to  gon  on  pilgrimages" 
and  these  good  Americans  go  abroad  and 
visit  strange  lands. 

And  some  of  them  never  forget  that  they  are 
good  Americans,  but  proclaim  it  wherever  they 
go  so  that  the  foreigner  laughs  in  his  sleeve 
and  says  "There  are  those  boastful  Americans 
again.  Methinks  they  do  protest  too  much." 

If  you  are  sure  deep  down  in  your  heart  that 
on  the  whole  you  belong  to  a  country  that  is  a 
leetle  the  best  on  earth,  you  will  do  well  to  say 
nothing  about  it  while  you  are  abroad. 

Just  act  so  well  that  perfection  of  manners 


66          I've  Been  Thinking 

will  come  in  time  to  mean  something  distinc- 
tively American,  and  then,  when  the  foreigner 
sees  a  sober,  well  behaved,  kindly  man  walking 
along  the  streets  of  his  town  he  will  say,  "Ah, 
it  is  easy  to  see  he  is  an  American.  There 
are  no  people  in  all  the  world  as  fine  as  they  — 
not  even  my  own  countrymen." 


I  OFTEN  wonder  what  would  happen  if 
some  of  the  ladies  who  unblushingly  meet 
our  gaze  in  the  advertising  sections  of  our  best 
magazines,  and  who  dress  no  more  warmly  in 
winter  than  in  summer,  were  to  invade  the 
body  of  their  respective  publications. 

I  think  that  there  would  be  a  general  rush 
for  the  tall  timber  on  the  part  of  the  self- 
respecting  heroes  and  heroines  and  general 
utility  men  and  women  of  the  stories,  because 
the  standard  of  proper  dressing  is  very  different 
in  the  first  hundred  pages  of  the  magazine 


I've  Been  Thinking          67 

from  what  it  is  in  the  remaining  two  hundred 
and  fifty. 

In  the  matter  of  language  I  think  that  the 
general  average  is  higher  in  the  advertising 
sections,  because  dialect  is  practically  un- 
known there,  but  the  way  the  ladies  (don't) 
dress  would  be  enough  to  cause  a  flutter  in 
the  pages  of  the  most  unconventional  story 
that  one  could  find  in  a  reputable  magazine. 

No  one  ever  seems  to  be  shocked  at  seeing 
ladies  walking  around  in  the  advertising  sec- 
tions in  patent  underwear,  and  perhaps  no 
one  ought  to  be  shocked  —  unless  it  is  bachelors 
—  but  suppose  you  read  in  a  serial  of  Howells' 
that  "Anna  Hamlin  was  in  no  danger  from 
pneumonia  because  she  always  wore  common- 
sense  wearing  apparel  underneath  that  which 
is  visible  to  the  outer  world"  (see  how  carefully 
one  has  to  express  himself  in  the  body  of  a 
magazine  ?)  and  a  picture  of  Miss  Hamlin  were 
inserted  at  that  place,  one  taken  from  the 


68          I've  Been  Thinking 

advertising  section  and  with  which  the  whole 
reading  public  is  familiar.  What  a  chorus  of 
indignant  protests  would  go  up  from  outraged 
readers  at  the  vulgarization  of  the  magazine. 

I  tell  you  that  circumstances  will  continue 
to  alter  cases  whenever  they  can  —  that's 
what  circumstances  are  for;  and  if  an  im- 
pudent young  hussy  strays  in  from  the  adver- 
tising pages  and  dares  to  stand  for  Anna 
Hamlin  she  will  be  shown  her  place  at  once 
because  the  American  public  will  not  stand 
for  anything  vulgar. 

No,  indeed! 

What  would  happen  if  another  leading 
novelist  said  in  the  course  of  his  serial  "that 
Grace  Hastings  attributed  her  good  health 
to  the  fact  that  she  always  took  a  cold  bath 
every  morning,"  and  the  art  editor  in  order  to 
save  expense  put  in  that  familiar  cut  of  a  lady 
bathing  in  the  Jinkins'  Portable  Celluloid 
Bath  Tub? 


I've  Been  Thinking          69 

Why,  Anthony  Comstock  would  foam  at 
the  mouth.  And  rightly  so.  But  we  are  all 
so  grateful  at  the  absence  of  dialect  in  the 
advertising  sections  of  our  magazines  that  we 
let  that  lady  stand  in  her  tub  throughout  the 
twelve  months  without  uttering  a  word  of 
protest. 

When  I  was  a  child  I  was  taught  that  it  was 
not  nice  to  speak  about  corsets.  If  I  had  to 
mention  them  I  must  call  them  bodices  or 
stays  or  —  I  forget  what  the  third  alternative 
was.  I  know  I  used  to  go  out  into  the  back- 
yard and  holler  "corsets"  just  because  I 
thought  it  was  pretty  awful. 

But  our  advertising  men  have  changed  all 
that.  They  not  only  talk  about  corsets,  but 
they  show  us  pictures  of  them,  and,  to  go  still 
further,  they  show  us  pictures  of  them  in  use. 

The  old  convention  as  to  the  mention  of 
corsets  has  also  disappeared  from  fiction  and 
one  might  easily  come  across  such  a  sentence 


yo          I've  Been  Thinking 

as  this:  "Miss  Postlethwaite  had  a  wasp-like 
waist  and  there  were  not  wanting  those  who 
said  her  corsets  caused  her  agony." 

But  what  would  happen  if  a  picture  of  Miss 
Postlethwaite' s  boudoir  were  shown  with  rouge 
et  noir  (for  the  cheeks  and  eyebrows)  on  her 
bureau  and  she  herself  fitted  into  one  of  Hug- 
gem's  papier-mache  corsets? 

I  know  I'd  stop  my  subscription  at  once. 

Suppose,  for  an  instant,  that  an  artist  were 
told  to  go  to  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House 
and  draw  a  picture  of  the  Four  Hundred  in 
their  boxes,  six  in  a  box,  making  something 
like  sixty-seven  boxes  —  with  the  lids  off. 
Suppose  that  instead  of  drawing  them  in  proper 
evening  dress  —  a  dress  requiring  85  degrees 
Fahr.  —  he  used  a  lot  of  pictures  from  the 
advertising  section  and  put  them  in  Jigger 
flannels,  would  he  keep  his  position  on  the 
staff  a  moment?  No,  of  course  not.  That 
would  be  a  case  where  to  put  on  more  clothes 


I've  Been  Thinking         71 

would  be  to  spoil  the  picture,  and  no  one  would 
recognize  the  Four  Hundred  at  an  opera  with 
arctic  habiliments  upon  them.  An  artist  must 
be  true  to  nature  and  he  must  not  be  vulgar. 
Nothing  is  more  confusing  to  a  person's  sense 
of  propriety  than  to  turn  quickly  from  the 
advertising  section  to  the  body  of  the  maga- 
zine and  back  again  as  I  have  seen  persons  do. 
The  mental  picture  of  the  young  lady  who  is 
braving  the  weather  for  the  sake  of  showing 
that  a  bath  tub  can  be  ornamental  as  well  as 
useful  is  transferred  to  the  bucolic  New  Eng- 
land story  and  we  Anglo-Saxons  are  shocked. 
There  is  no  other  name  for  it.  It  is  very 
demoralizing  to  turn  the  pages  rapidly  back 
and  forth.  One  should  read  the  stories  first 
and  take  comfort  in  the  thought  that  no  decent 
editor  will  allow  any  artist  to  picture  any  kind 
of  vestiture  that  would  not  go  at  Asbury  Park. 
Then  let  him  brace  himself  and  turn  the  leaves 
that  lead  to  the  tropic  ladies.  It  is  still  Anglo- 


72          I've  Been  Thinking 

Saxon,  but  it  is  advertising,  and  the  conven- 
tions are  different  in  that  world. 

A  friend  of  mine  who  has  no  regard  for 
people's  feelings  actually  cut  out  a  number  of 
the  advertisements  in  the  back  of  a  magazine 
that  has  led  us  on  to  a  higher  civilization  for 
fifty  years  or  more,  and  when  I  saw  he  had 
done  it  I  applauded  him.  I  said  "Good,  old 
man;  they're  better  out."  But  the  graceless 
chap  with  diabolical  ingenuity  fitted  each 
flannel  lady  and  each  custodian  of  the  bath 
into  drawing-rooms  devised  by  the  staff  artists 
of  that  magazine  and  I  blushed  for  a  good  half 
hour.  We  Americans  will  not  stand  for  semi- 
nudity  in  the  wrong  place.  It's  all  very  well 
at  the  opera  or  at  a  ball  or  a  swagger  dinner, 
but  in  the  body  of  a  reputable  magazine  the 
day  will  never  come  when  it  will  be  considered 
respectable.  And  the  advertisers  themselves 
will  be  the  first  to  agree  with  me. 

Back  to  your  celluloid  tub,  oh,  lady  of  the 


I've  Been  Thinking        73 

bath!    We  who  are  reading  the  serials  will 
not  look  upon  you. 


MY  dear  young  mother,  will  you  pardon 
me  if  I  address  a  few  words  to  you 
upon  the  subject  of  Theodore  ?  I  have  noticed 
for  some  time  how  vigilant  has  been  your  care 
for  the  manly  little  fellow.  You  will  not  let 
him  play  with  Tommy  Perkins  in  the  summer 
because  Tommy  says  "Gosh!"  You  have  for- 
bidden him  to  associate  in  the  slightest  degree 
with  Eddy  Conway  because  Eddy  smokes 
cigarettes,  and  you  have  threatened  to  have 
his  father  chastise  him  if  he  has  anything  to 
do  with  Aleck  Saunders  because  Aleck  swears 
like  a  trooper  in  Flanders. 

You  have  done  all  these  things  in  order  that 
Theodore's  language  may  be  free  from  the 
tares  that  might  otherwise  choke  it;  but  have 
you  been  careful  in  all  things?  Have  you  seen 


74          I've  Been  Thinking 

to  it  that  the  records  of  the  talking  machine 
that  you  bought  for  his  delectation  are  up  to 
your  own  high  standard  of  grammar  and  cul- 
ture ?  I  trow  not. 

A  phonograph  need  not  be  vulgar  if  its  early 
associates  are  of  the  proper  kind,  but  I  notice 
that  many  of  them  are  vulgar.  One  gets  the 
impression  that  they  have  copied  the  speech 
of  coarse  and  uncultivated  men.  Phonographs 
have  absolutely  no  creative  ability,  but  they 
are,  within  certain  limitations,  absolute  mimics 
and  they  have  the  knack  of  picking  up  the 
phrases  of  men  whom  you  would  never  think 
of  admitting  to  your  drawing-room. 

You  were  horrified  the  other  day  at  the 
notion  of  letting  dear  Theodore  go  to  one  of 
the  most  respectable  of  continuous  shows,  but 
the  new  record  that  came  to  him  that  after- 
noon had  mimicked  word  for  word  a  mono- 
logue that  never  would  have  been  allowed 
upon  the  boards  of  that  theater.  His  little 


I've  Been  Thinking          75 

friends  Aloysius  and  Van  Sutphen  and  Salton- 
stall  use  an  English  remarkable  for  its  purity 
of  inflection  and  intonation,  but  that  phono- 
graph record  has  a  diction  unspeakably  vul- 
gar. It  is  not  alone  the  thing  it  says,  but  the 
nasty  way  it  says  it,  that  makes  it  a  poor  com- 
panion for  Theodore. 

Pardon  me,  my  dear  young  mother,  but  I 
can't  help  laughing  at  you  just  a  little.  You 
take  Theodore  to  the  symphony  concerts  that 
he  may  cultivate  his  musical  taste,  but  I  never 
hear  him  whistling  any  movement  from  Bee- 
thoven's, Schubert's  or  Schumann's  symphonies. 
Yet  that  inexpressible  street  song  that  emerged 
from  the  phonograph  last  week  was  his  in  a 
half  hour,  both  words,  music  —  and  vulgarity. 
I  believe  that  Mrs.  Perkins  would  have  spanked 
Tommy  if  he  had  sung  it  in  her  presence, 
although  she  does  tolerate  his  "Gosh!" 

I  really  can't  blame  the  talking  machine. 
It  has  no  conscience ;  it  has  no  pride  of  ancestry 


j6          I've  Been  Thinking 

to  keep  it  in  the  right  way.  It  has  simply  a 
waxlike  receptive  capacity  and  absolutely  no 
sense  of  selection.  If  it  heard  good  songs  and 
refined  speeches  it  would  undoubtedly  repeat 
them,  but  as  its  associates  are  for  the  most 
part  vulgar  it  is  small  wonder  that  with  its 
remarkable  imitative  faculty  it  should  pick  up 
many  words,  phrases,  ideas,  and  kit  motiven 
that  are  objectionable.  The  fault  is  not  with 
the  phonograph;  it  lies  with  you,  and  it  is  to 
me  inexpressibly  droll  to  see  you  shielding 
Theodore  from  those  pestilent  fellows,  Tommy, 
Eddy  and  Aleck,  while  you  admit  to  the  in- 
timacy of  your  house  those  records  that  suc- 
cessfully imitate  the  tough  whine,  the  illiterate 
grammatical  construction  and  the  at  times 
disgustingly  vulgar  witticisms  of  the  cheaper 
stage. 

I  am  not  standing  up  for  Tommy  Perkins 
or  Eddy  Conway  or  Aleck  Saunders,  but 
Theodore  might  imitate  some  of  their  good 


I've  Been  Thinking         77 

points  at  the  same  time  that  he  learned  to  say 
"Gosh!"  or  to  smoke  corn-silk  cigarettes.  It 
is  also  possible  to  break  up  a  tendency  to  swear 
and  one  may  reason  a  boy  out  of  the  habit  of 
acting  as  a  chimney  while  incinerating  corn 
silk. 

But  the  tough  accent  once  acquired  is  almost 
ineradicable,  and  I  cannot  conceive  any  good 
coming  from  Theodore's  association  with  the 
uncanny  voice  which  says,  "Loidies  an'  gen'l'- 
mun,  de  udder  day  I  wouldn'  have  went  to  de 
t'eater  on'y  I  chanst  to  meet  a  young  dame  on 
der  street,"  etc. 

A  man  is  known  by  the  cylinders  he  keeps. 


ARE  you  dowdy? 
If  you  are  not,  don't  read  this  at  all, 
but  if  you  are,  take  my  advice  and  secure  a 
full-length  photograph  of  yourself  and  study 
it.    What  may  have  escaped  your  attention 


78          I've  Been  Thinking 

in  your  own  small  mirror  will  be  brought  home 
to  you  in  a  portrait.  Ask  your  friends  if  you 
are  dowdy,  and  if  they  hesitate,  even  for  a 
moment,  in  answering  you,  you  are. 

Having  found  out  that  you  are  dowdy,  the 
next  thing  to  do  is  to  stop  being  dowdy. 

If  you  are  married,  stop  it  because  your 
husband  doesn't  like  it. 

If  you  are  single,  stop  it  because  the  young 
men  of  your  acquaintance  don't  like  it. 

I  can't  tell  the  difference  between  a  bolero 
and  a  polonaise:  I  am  not  an  expert  in  femi- 
nine sartorial  terminology,  but  I  can  tell  a 
dowdy  woman  a  block  off  and  so  can  every 
other  American  man. 

It  is  just  as  much  an  affront  to  your  family 
to  be  a  dowdy  as  it  is  to  serve  uninteresting 
dinners.  Let  your  food  be  plain  if  need  be, 
but  let  it  be  something  that  attracts  the  atten- 
tion of  the  tongue  and  causes  it  to  telegraph 
pleasant  news  to  the  stomach. 


I've  Been  Thinking          79 

So  though  your  clothes  be  plain  and  inex- 
pensive, make  them  interesting.  If  you  have 
been  married  for  some  time  and  have  always 
been  dowdy,  you  will  be  surprised  to  see  how 
the  change  in  your  get-up  will  affect  your  hus- 
band. He  will  begin  to  take  notice  and  will 
tell  you  you're  growing  young  again. 

Get  together  in  this,  oh  women,  and  the 
dowdy  will  become  as  extinct  as  the  dodo. 


"  TT  was  the  night  before  Christmas."  How 
JL  easy  to  write  those  words.  How  much 
literature  has  been  started  by  that  phrase !  — 
but  it  didn't  all  turn  out  to  be  literature.  Yes, 
that  phrase  was  a  good  starter;  it  is  the  loco- 
motive that  draws  a  long  and  ofttimes  heavy 
train  of  thought  along  ways  covered  with  ice 
and  snow,  past  the  homes  of  the  rich  and  poor; 
and  the  inevitable  destination  of  each  train  is 
Merry  Christmas. 


8o          I've  Been  Thinking 

It  is  easy  to  get  up  steam  and  start  your 
train  along  the  rails  —  rails  at  the  heartless- 
ness  of  the  rich;  rails  at  the  insincerity  that 
accompanies  the  giving  of  presents;  rails  at 
the  helpless  condition  of  the  poor,  with  so 
much  money  locked  up  in  safes.  You  can  get 
along  on  the  rails  all  right  for  a  time.  But 
after  the  engine  has  gone  a  few  feet  —  particu- 
larly if  it  be  verse  you  are  writing  —  the  wheels 
revolve  on  the  slippery  track  (and  in  your  head) 
and  it  sometimes  takes  a  heap  of  sand  to  get 
her  a-going  again. 

You  are  approaching  a  crossing  now.  It  is 
time  to  ring  the  bell.  "Ring,  happy  bells, 
across  the  snow."  Your  Christmas  story 
wouldn't  be  the  real  thing  if  you  didn't  work 
that  in.  It  is  now  about  time  to  stop  and  let 
your  hero  or  heroine,  or  both,  get  aboard. 
And  while  the  train  waits  pluck  a  few  holly 
berries  and  mistletoe,  for  these  are  indispen- 
sable. 


I've  Been  Thinking         81 

Now  you're  off  again.  Is  your  hero  going 
to  be  rich  or  poor?  If  poor,  make  him  bare- 
foot and  have  him  wonder  what  he'll  hang  up 
in  lieu  of  stockings  for  the  visit  of  old  Kris 
Kringle  —  be  sure  to  call  him  by  that  quaint 
title  at  least  once.  If  he  be  rich,  clothe  him 
in  golf  stockings,  and  it  will  puzzle  the  old 
saint  how  to  fill  them. 

The  train  is  slowing  up  again.  It  is  here 
that  the  consumptive  mother  and  the  rich  and 
surly  uncle  come  aboard.  Make  the  old  man 
a  Gradgrind.  Buy  a  copy  of  Christmas  Carols 
from  the  train  boy,  so  you'll  be  able  to  get  the 
right  atmosphere  for  your  story.  Also  open 
the  window  and  let  in  a  whiff  of  frosty  air. 

You'd  better  stop  pretty  soon  for  refresh- 
ments. Whether  you're  going  to  feed  your 
characters  on  stale  fish-balls  and  candle-ends 
or  on  a  regular  turkey  dinner,  a  meal  of  some 
kind  is  absolutely  necessary. 

The  journey  hasn't  been  so  bad  thus  far, 


82          I've  Been  Thinking 

and  you  needn't  make  it  much  longer.  Re- 
member that  the  engineer  and  the  reader  are 
human  and  let  up  on  them. 

If  your  hero  be  poor  make  it  all  right  with 
him,  just  as  those  bells  are  ushering  in  the 
dawn  of  Christmas;  if  he  be  rich,  give  him  the 
usual  change  of  heart,  and  from  habitual  and 
ingrained  niggardliness  and  rasping  ill-temper 
metamorphose  him  into  a  genial  old  philan- 
thropist —  it'll  go,  in  a  Christmas  story. 

Drop  a  few  turkeys  and  cranberries  on  the 
poor  consumptive's  bed;  let  some  kind-hearted 
old  Hebrew  in  the  sock  business  donate  a 
dozen  of  the  useful  articles  to  the  poor  little 
barefoot  boy,  fill  'em  up  with  candies  and  the 
usual  outfit,  and  then  have  the  brakeman  stick 
his  head  in  at  the  car-door  and  yell  "Merry 
Christmas.  Last  stop!" 


I've  Been  Thinking          83 

DOES  it  worry  you  to  have  your  husband 
bring  some  men  home  to  dinner?  I 
mean  do  you  feel  afraid  that  your  guest  will 
notice  that  you  have  a  misfit  set  of  tableware 
and  that  your  maid  is  not  well  trained? 

Recollect  that  if  your  guest  notices  those 
things  to  your  detriment  he  is  not  worthy  of  you. 

You  are  just  as  good  as  the  best  person  who 
could  possibly  visit  you.  If  you're  not  it's 
your  own  fault. 

Do  the  best  you  can  with  your  service,  be 
sure  to  have  your  food  well  cooked  and  pala- 
tably seasoned,  and  then  treat  your  guest  as 
simply  as  you  know  how. 

If  he  acts  as  if  he  were  better  than  you  he 
surely  is  not  as  good  as  you.  If  he  accepts 
your  hospitality  in  the  same  spirit  in  which 
you  offer  it,  he  is  all  right  and  you'd  better 
have  him  out  again. 

But  it  is  not  worth  while  for  either  you  or 


84          I've  Been  Thinking 

your  husband  to  bother  with  people  who  can- 
not accept  your  ways  of  living. 

If  the  man  who  is  coming  out  awes  you  be- 
cause he  is  rich,  try  to  remember  some  ancestor 
of  yours  who  made  the  world  better  worth  living 
in.  If  your  guest  awes  you  because  of  his  cul- 
ture, remember  that  you  are  trying  to  make  life 
worth  living  to  your  husband  and  your  children 
(perhaps  you're  not,  but  you  really  ought  to). 

But  if  the  man  who  is  coming  awes  you 
because  of  his  blue  blood,  remember  that  kind 
hearts  are  more  than  coronets  and  tell  him  his 
grandmother  was  a  monkey.  It'll  break  the  ice. 


SOME  one  with  a  taste  for  figures  was  telling 
me  the  other  day  that  since  the  formation 
of  the  United  States  somewhere  back  in  the 
century  before  the  last,  only  twenty-six  Ameri- 
cans have  become  President — and  not  a  single 
foreigner. 


I've  Been  Thinking          85 

Doesn't  this  fact  put  parents  and  teachers 
in  rather  an  unenviable  position  as  regards  sin- 
cerity? Here  we  have  to-day  at  least  ten 
million  innocent  children  in  this  broad  land  of 
ours,  and  nearly  every  one  has  been  told  that  he 
has  a  chance  to  become  President  if  he  will  only 
regard  his  book  and  be  a  good  boy  and  do  more 
right  than  wrong. 

For  my  part,  I  think  we  ought  to  take  our 
children  aside  and  tell  them  frankly  that  they 
have  mighty  little  chance.  Think  of  a  bright 
boy  toiling  on  at  school,  avoiding  athletics  and 
burning  the  midnight  oil  and  his  brain  as  well 
—  for  there's  as  much  consumption  of  brain  as 
there  is  of  midnight  oil  in  these  nocturnal 
studyings  —  think  of  him  pushing  on  in  every 
State  in  the  Union  hoping  for  the  Presidency, 
while  we  know  that  for  the  next  fifty  years  we 
can't  expect  to  put  more  than  five  of  the  children 
of  to-day  into  the  great  position. 

For  my  part  I'd  say  to  my  child:  "Rollo, 


86          I've  Been  Thinking 

there's  the  Presidency.  It's  a  lottery.  No  man 
ever  knew  from  the  beginning  that  he  was  going 
to  get  it.  Washington  was  real  surprised,  Hayes 
had  his  doubts  even  after  election  day,  and 
Roosevelt  often  goes  off  by  himself  and  says, 
'Is  it  really  possible  that  the  former  cowboy 
and  literary  man,  the  hero  of  thousands  of 
young  men,  is  President  of  this  mighty  people 
and  might  be  yet  again  if  he  were  to  allow 
his  name  to  be  used?'  But,  as  I  say,  my 
boy,  it's  a  lottery,  and  this  country  of  ours  is 
opposed  to  lotteries  —  officially. 

"Emerson,"  I  would  say,  continuing  the  con- 
versation —  for  you  understand  that  this  is  a 
hypothetical  case  and  that  therefore  the  boy 
has  got  to  stand  still  and  listen  —  "Emerson 
said,  'Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star,'  but  you  may 
make  a  mistake  and  hitch  it  to  a  comet  and 
then,  where  is  your  wagon? 

"There  are  plenty  of  likelier  horses,  my  son, 
and  in  these  days  of  automobiles  it  isn't  neces- 


I've  Been  Thinking          87 

sary  to  hitch  your  wagon  to  anything.  Just 
make  up  your  mind  where  you  want  to  go,  be 
sure  you  have  motive  power  enough  to  get  there, 
and  then  turn  on  the  current.  But  put  the 
Presidency  out  of  your  mind  once  and  for  all." 

The  Presidency  —  I  am  not  talking  to  my 
son  now,  but  just  to  you,  dear  reader  —  the  son 
escaped  after  all,  hypothetical  though  he  was 
—  the  Presidency  is,  as  a  general  rule,  equiva- 
lent to  a  life  sentence.  Few  there  be  who 
survive  its  term  of  office  many  years.  There 
have  been  solid  exceptions,  but  as  a  general 
thing  when  a  man  has  passed  through  four 
years  of  hand-shaking  and  politician-shaking 
he  is  willing  to  wrap  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
around  him  as  Bryant  did  at  the  age  of  nineteen. 
Bryant  lived  for  some  seventy  years  after,  but 
no  former  President  ever  did.  Not  one. 

And  on  the  other  hand  Bryant  never  became 
President.  There's  Bryant  who  could  and  who 
did  write  "Thanatopsis"  at  the  age  of  nineteen, 


88          I've  Been  Thinking 

and  he's  the  only  man  in  the  history  of  the 
United  States  who  ever  wrote  it,  and  he  never 
became  President,  never  in  his  life.  And  there's 
Andrew  Johnson,  who  at  the  same  age  could 
neither  read  nor  write,  and  he  became  President. 
Of  course  it's  a  lottery,  and  I'm  opposed  to 
lotteries  on  principle. 

There  came  a  day  in  my  own  life  when  I 
gave  up  all  thought  of  being  President.  I  said 
to  myself:  "It  will  be  hard  work  to  get  the 
attention  of  the  public  in  this  thing.  Many  will 
not  know  who  I  am  or  where  I  came  from,  and 
perhaps  if  I  do  get  the  nomination  on  the  inde- 
pendent prohibition  or  labor  ticket  I  will  wake 
up  the  day  after  election  and  find  that  some 
totally  different  person  has  won  the  prize,  and 
I'll  be  extremely  mortified  and  absolutely  put 
to  it  to  pay  my  legitimate  election  expenses  — 
to  say  nothing  of  the  illegitimate  ones." 

So  I  put  this  possible  honor  from  me. 
Heavens!  it  wasn't  that  I  did  not  appreciate 


I've  Been  Thinking          89 

the  honor.  A  man  has  a  right  to  feel  proud 
when  millions  of  his  fellow  citizens,  many  of 
them  unable  to  read  or  write  or  think,  elect  him 
to  the  proudest  position  in  the  gift  of  any  nation. 
I  weighed  the  whole  thing  pro  and  con  and 
then  I  said,  deliberately  and  firmly,  "No,  sir, 
I  am  going  to  lead  Wagner's  simple  life.  I'm 
going  to  get  simpler  and  simpler  and  perhaps 
I'll  die  contented." 

Fellow  citizens,  there  comes  a  time  to  all  of 
us  who  have  an  eye  on  the  Presidency  when 
we  must  make  up  our  mind  to  give  up  the 
contest  or  else  accept  the  inevitable  with  calm 
steadfastness.  I  simply  couldn't  bear  to  be 
defeated  for  the  Presidency.  Do  you  suppose 
that  I  could  read  in  the  papers  that  I  was 
snowed  under  in  every  State  in  the  Union,  and 
then  calmly  take  a  poem  and  try  to  sell  it  to 
an  editor?  No,  sir!  I'd  use  back  streets  for 
the  rest  of  my  life  and  write  under  a  pen  name. 
Cincinnatus  hadn't  been  defeated  for  Senator 


90          I've  Been  Thinking 

when  he  went  back  to  the  plough.  The  honor 
of  election  is  great,  but  the  mortification  of 
defeat  is  greater. 

Look  at  Horace  Greeley.  He  wasn't  content 
to  be  the  Nestor  of  American  journalism;  he 
must  try  to  be  President.  Said  he'd  rather  be 
President  than  write. 

The  result  was  too  lamentable  to  jest  about. 
I  was  a  mere  boy  at  the  time,  but  it  saved  me 
from  the  Presidency.  It  was  the  turning  of 
the  ways.  Like  Rutherford  B.  Hayes,  I  went 
into  the  egg  business;  but  unlike  him  —  or 
maybe  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that 
like  him  —  I  never  was  President  de  jure.  But 
that  is  a  bygone.  Twenty  years  ago  if  I  had 
said  that  many  people  would  have  frothed  at 
the  mouth.  Many  people  still  froth  at  the 
mouth,  but  the  froth  is  apropos  of  other  matters. 
Significant  name  that  —  froth. 

No,  fellow  countrymen,  let  us  be  contented. 
It  is  not  likely  that  over  twenty,  at  the  outside, 


I've  Been  Thinking          91 

of  those  Americans  who  are  now  living  will  ever 
add  luster  to  the  Presidential  chair  —  or  even 
sit  in  it.  Let  the  rest  of  us  go  about  our  business 
with  contentment,  and  every  four  years  let  us 
elevate  one  of  the  twenty  with  a  good  grace,  and 
for  four  years  thereafter  let  every  man  mind  his 
own  business  —  and  see  that  he  has  a  business 
to  mind  —  and  this  country  will  stride  forward 
as  it  has  not  yet  stridden  —  or  is  it  strode  ? 


ARE  you  fond  of  looking  up  your  gene- 
alogy? 

It's  a  good  thing  to  be  fond  of,  believe  me, 
only  don't  let  it  stop  at  the  mere  getting  of 
names  and  dates. 

You  believe  that  Theodore  and  Dorothea 
ought  to  study  history  at  school.  History  is 
the  account  of  the  doings  of  races  and  it  is  very 
valuable.  But  the  study  of  history  in  your 
own  family  cannot  fail  to  be  stimulating. 


92          I've  Been  Thinking 

If  you  learn  that  Great-grandfather  Smith 
was  a  murderer  or  a  sheep  stealer  you  can  take 
great  comfort  in  the  thought  that  neither 
Theodore  nor  Dorothea  shows  any  inclination 
to  follow  in  his  footsteps,  and  your  optimism 
receives  an  impetus. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  you  find  that  Great- 
grandfather Smith  was  much  beloved  by  his 
neighbors  and  tried  to  do  his  duty  as  the  Lord 
gave  him  light,  why  there  you  have  a  good 
reason  why  Theodore  and  Dorothea  should 
strive  to  be  worthy  descendents  of  such  an 
ancestor. 

It  will  be  interesting  to  learn  that  that 
peculiar  trick  of  holding  her  head  on  one  side 
that  Dorothea  has  was  a  peculiarity  of  Great- 
grandmother  Robinson,  and  that  Theodore's 
one-sided  smile  was  remarked  in  Great-grand- 
father Brown  as  far  back  as  1793  in  a  diary 
kept  by  his  schoolmate,  Darius  Woodruff. 

And  if  Cousin   John  bends  his  elbow  too 


I've  Been  Thinking          93 

often  you  may  be  less  hard  on  him  when  you 
learn  that  Great-grandfather  Jones  could  out- 
drink  any  man  in  Suffolk  County  and  that  his 
father  was  a  "three-bottle  man." 

If  you  yourself  are  selfish  and  you  read  in  a 
letter  written  just  before  the  battle  of  Lexing- 
ton that  your  great-great-grandfather  was  noted 
for  his  unselfishness  you  have  an  incentive  to 
shape  your  life  something  like  his. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  find  out  in  some 
old  record  that  your  maternal  great-great- 
grandfather was  the  most  selfish  man  who 
ever  rode  a  farm  wagon  into  Boston  it  is  surely 
high  time  that  your  family  stopped  being 
selfish. 

Oh,  yes,  the  minute  study  of  family  histories 
is  diverting,  stimulating,  useful  —  and  shock- 
ing. 


94          I've  Been  Thinking 

DO  you  intend  to  become  an  essayist, 
gentle  writer?  Then  learn  the  art  of 
apt  and  apposite  quotation.  Quotations  are 
not  more  desirable  to  a  stock-broker  than  they 
should  be  to  you.  Cultivate  Bartlett. 

To  plant  in  the  bare  sands  of  an  arid  imag- 
ination the  borrowed  flowers  of  the  successful 
gardeners  of  literature  is  to  prepare  a  parterre 
that  shall  please  even  the  critical.  For  when 
a  man  not  variously  learned  comes  on  a  pas- 
sage that  he  has  himself  read  hi  the  original 
setting,  his  vanity  is  tickled. 

Tickle  your  reader's  vanity  often  enough, 
and  he  is  yours  and  will  sound  your  praises. 
"A  nightingale  dies  for  shame  if  another  bird 
sings  better,"  but  you  who  are  not  a  nightingale 
might  die  for  shame  if  it  were  not  for  the  sing- 
ing of  that  large  chorus  of  English  birds  that 
make  your  songs  possible.  "Homer  himself 
must  beg  if  he  wants  means,"  and  if  Homer 


I've  Been  Thinking          95 

begs,  who  are  you  that  says,  "to  beg  I  am 
ashamed"  ?  See  only  that  you  beg  at  the  right 
gates,  and  you  shall  enjoy  a  borrowed  richness 
that  in  the  minds  of  many  passes  for  a  home- 
made garment  of  great  value. 

"Some  books  are  to  be  tasted,  others  to  be 
swallowed,"  and  others  quoted.  "Reading 
maketh  a  full  man,"  not  only  that,  but  "out 
of  the  fullness  of  the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh," 
and  he  who  has  read  much  and  remembered 
much  can  write  well. 

"Discretion  of  speech  is  more  than  elo- 
quence," and  the  most  discreet  man  is  the  man 
who  knows  where  to  borrow  to  advantage. 
There  be  those  who  write  original  essays  of 
which  the  best  that  may  be  said  is,  "It  is  his 
own."  Better  far  the  essay  that  glitters  and 
sparkles  with  a  thousand  gems  niched  from 
the  world's  great  lapidaries. 

"Brevity  is  the  soul  of  wit,"  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  every  postal  card  contains  an  epi- 


96          I've  Been  Thinking 

gram.  The  safest  way  to  insure  wit  in  your 
essay  is  to  pick  it  where  you  find  it,  and  ten 
chances  to  one  that  will  not  be  in  your  own 
brain.  Better  the  wit  of  others  than  no  wit 
at  all  —  which  might  be  a  proverb,  but  is  not. 

Shakespeare  has  well  said,  "There  is  nothing 
either  good  or  bad,  but  thinking  makes  it  so." 
If  this  but  applied  to  your  essay,  O  writer! 
what  an  excellent  thing  it  wrould  be!  But  it 
lies  not  within  your  gray  matter  to  compass  it. 
Again,  with  the  bard,  you  say,  "I  must  become 
a  borrower,"  and  you  walk  down  the  pleasant 
gardens,  plucking  here  and  there  a  flower  of 
fancy  until  your  little  essay  stuns  the  eye  with 
color.  "Here's  richness!" 

Nothing  that  you  can  say  but  has  been  well 
said  before;  therefore  quote  it,  fusing  it,  if  you 
will,  with  your  poor  thought  to  decrystallize  it 
and  make  it  seem  a  new  thing. 

"Here  are  a  few  of  the  unpleasant'st  words 
that  ever  blotted  paper."  Do  not  use  them, 


I've  Been  Thinking         97 

then.  Make  your  essay  light,  graceful,  full  of 
the  whipped  cream  of  human  kindness. 

"Silence  is  the  perfectest  herald  of  joy," 
says  Will  again,  but  had  he  kept  silence,  what 
joy  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  had  missed,  and 
how  weak  in  quotation  had  been  thy  essay! 
Has  not  this  same  Shakespeare  said,  "What's 
mine  is  yours?"  Therefore,  do  not  scruple  to 
take  it  if  it  will  "make  light  where  darkness 
reigned." 

"Who  would  write  well  must  first  have 
loved."  There  you  are.  It  is  not  "nominated 
in  the  bond"  what  you  must  have  loved; 
therefore  it  may  as  well  be  books  as  any  other 
thing.  You  have  loved  books,  you  have  gath- 
ered of  their  honey;  now  let  it  drop  from  off 
your  stylus  and  sweeten  this  essay  over  which 
you  labor. 

A  sixteenth-century  writer  says,  "They  lard 
their  lean  books  with  the  fat  of  others'  works." 
There  you  have  an  old  precedent,  so  fear  not. 


98          I've  Been  Thinking 

You  are  in  good  company.  You  do  but  take 
what  others  have  taken  before.  Quote  you 
never  so  well,  you  do  but  requote,  and  it  may 
be  that  he  from  whom  you  quote  lifted  his 
thought  from  a  richer  than  he.  It  is  well  said 
that  "a  dwarf,  standing  on  the  shoulders  of  a 
giant,  may  see  further  than  a  giant  himself," 
and  if  he  can  see  further  it  stands  to  reason 
that  he  can  be  seen  further.  Your  borrowed 
plumes  will  make  you  a  marked  man;  that  is, 
one  who  is  "read,  marked,  learned,  and  in- 
wardly digested." 

"We  can  say  nothing  but  what  hath  been 
said."  Why  attempt  the  impossible,  then? 
"I  would  help  others  out  of  a  fellow-feeling." 
I  have  been  thought-dry  myself.  I  dare  say 
that  there  were  mornings  when  John  Milton 
said:  "I  had  rather  than  forty  shillings  I  had 
never  begun  'Paradise  Lost.'  I  have  keyed 
it  so  high  that  it  splits  my  throat  to  sing  it." 

"Angling   is   somewhat   like   poetry  —  men 


I've  Been  Thinking          99 

are  to  be  born  so."  So  angle  that  ye  obtain 
the  prize.  Fish  in  other  men's  streams  and  a 
full  basket  will  surely  reward  your  persever- 
ance. And  when  you  have  spread  your  wares 
in  the  market  place,  not  one  in  ten  will  care 
who  owned  the  fish  originally.  You  will  re- 
ceive the  credit  even  if  you  pepper  your  work 
all  over  with  quotation  marks. 

Emerson  says,  "The  passages  of  Shake- 
speare that  we  most  prize  were  never  quoted 
until  this  century."  Do  you  not  see  that  it  was 
not  what  Shakespeare  himself  said  that  men 
valued?  It  was  not  until  his  jewels  flashed  in 
other  men's  bosoms  that  we  perceived  their 
luster.  Therefore  quote,  for  in  so  doing  you 
will  be  rendering  the  bard  a  service. 

Some  one  has  said,  "He  that  I  am  reading 
seems  always  to  have  the  most  force."  Re- 
member that,  O  gentle  essayist!  Do  not 
scruple  to  help  thyself,  and  having  done  so, 
to  "take  thy  pen  and  write  down  quickly." 


ioo        I've  Been  Thinking 

"It  is  hard  for  an  empty  bag  to  stand  up- 
right," but  thanks  to  your  incursions  into  the 
fields  of  literature,  your  bag  is  full.  Let  it 
stand. 


YOUR  boy  stands  in  awe  of  you. 
That's  a  pretty  bad  state  of  affairs,  if 
you  don't  mind  plain  talk. 

Who  are  you,  anyway,  that  he  should  stand 
in  awe  of  you? 

Weren't  you  a  boy  once?  Isn't  there  a 
little  remnant  of  boy  somewhere  in  your  heart 
yet? 

I  don't  say  that  he  ought  not  to  respect  you. 
I  hope  you  respect  him,  but  just  remember  that 
it  is  only  a  matter  of  twenty-five  years  that 
separates  you.  He  came  to  this  globe  later 
than  you,  but  he  is  doing  the  same  act  and  you 
are  really  only  brothers  if  you'd  only  look  at  it 
in  that  way. 


I've  Been  Thinking        101 

Get  next  to  your  boy. 

Put  him  next  to  you. 

If  he  stands  in  awe  of  you  it  may  be  never- 
theless that  he  doesn't  love  you  and  it's  a  heap 
sight  better  for  a  boy  to  love  his  father  than 
to  think  that  his  father  is  a  little  tin  god  on 
wheels. 

Because  you're  not  one.  You  may  have 
the  tin  —  and  you  may  have  the  wheels,  but 
there  is  mighty  little  that's  godlike  about  you, 
more's  the  pity. 

So  just  lay  away  that  awful  frown  and  learn 
to  throw  cart-wheels  in  the  back  yard  and  for- 
get that  you  are  so  important. 

Because  on  my  word  you  are  not  important. 
We'd  swing  through  space  just  as  steadily 
with  you  off  the  map  as  we  do  now.  And  the 
boy,  while  he  might  look  solemn,  wouldn't 
feel  half  as  bad  as  he  would  if  you  Brothered 
him  a  little  more. 

Take  a  shy  at  it. 


102        I've  Been  Thinking 

WHY  is  it  that  the  importance  of  tags 
is  so  often  undervalued?  How  are 
we  to  know  whether  a  thing  is  good  or  not  if 
we  don't  know  who  did  it?  How  are  we  to 
know  whether  a  man  is  to  be  treated  with  dis- 
tinguished consideration  and  respect  if  he  has 
no  tag? 

Let  us  put  it  in  concrete  form.  Let  us  sup- 
pose a  room  full  of  men  and  women  assembled 
for  a  musicale.  They  have  come  to  be  enter- 
tained by  music  which  they  presume  is  up  to  a 
certain  standard,  for  they  have  some  faith  in 
the  judgment  of  their  hostess,  whom  we  will 
call  Mrs.  Bushel;  but  it  happens  that  she  does 
not  understand  human  nature,  and  she  care- 
lessly neglects  to  place  a  label  on  the  young 
man  who  sits  down  to  play,  and  what  is  the 
result  ?  Why,  he  is  rewarded  with  half-hearted 
applause.  And  he  himself  neglects  to  say  that 
the  piece  he  is  playing  is  a  well-known  thing 


I've  Been  Thinking        103 

of  Grieg's,  and  the  audience  is  doubly  handi- 
capped. They  see  he  plays  well,  but  they  do 
not  wish  to  be  led  away  by  false  enthusiasms. 
Yet,  as  it  happens,  this  young  man  is  a  great 
pianist,  and  not  only  that,  but  a  man  who  in 
Dresden  is  beloved  by  the  ladies  —  a  second 
Paderewski.  Imagine  the  chagrin  of  some  of 
his  auditors  when  they  hear  him  the  next 
evening  at  Mrs.  Lionhunter's.  She  under- 
stands the  value  of  tags.  She  buys  them  by 
the  dozen  at  her  stationer's.  She  goes  around 
in  her  gushing,  compelling  way,  and  says: 
"Oh,  I'm  so  glad  you've  come.  Whom  do 
you  suppose  I  have  captured  for  to-night? 
Albrecht  Musikheim,  the  wonderful  pianist 
from  the  Dresden  Conservatory.  He  has  played 
but  once  in  this  country,  and  then  it  was  more 
of  a  rehearsal  than  anything  else;  at  that 
impossible  Mrs.  Bushel's,  who  would  extin- 
guish Etna  if  she  came  near  it.  I  have  asked 
him  to  play  that  adorable  thing  of  Grieg's 


104        I've  Been  Thinking 

that  he  composed  for  King  Oscar.  You  have 
never  heard  piano-playing  until  to-night." 

And  then  when  the  audience  is  assembled 
and  quiet  she  leads  Herr  Musikheim  in  —  on 
stilts  —  and  all  in  the  room  are  immediately 
swayed  by  his  magnetism,  and  prepared  to 
accept  him  before  he  touches  the  piano.  Even 
you  who  heard  him  last  night  remember  that 
you  thought  he  was  remarkable,  although  you 
forgot  to  say  so. 

He  knows  that  his  tag  is  on  to-night,  and 
he  plays  better  for  the  knowledge.  And  you 
know  that  the  piece  he  is  playing  is  famous, 
and  by  Grieg  at  that,  and  you  immediately 
predict  his  success  in  this  country.  But  let 
me  tell  you,  it  will  take  plenty  of  tags  and  a 
good  deal  of  ability,  too,  for  some  of  these 
newspaper  critics  are  really  discerning.  I  say 
some  of  them  are  really  discerning,  and  one 
or  two  claim  that  they  can  dispense  with  tags. 
I  wonder! 


I've  Been  Thinking        105 

Years  ago  the  magazines  did  not  tag  their 
articles  unless  they  were  by  men  who  had  been 
tagged  for  years,  men  like  Anthony  Trollope 
and  Charles  Dickens  and  Wilkie  Collins. 
What  was  the  result?  Why,  people  had  no 
opinion  of  American  literature,  but  read  Eng- 
lish books  in  preference  to  those  written  by 
Americans.  Then  some  magazine  started  the 
fashion  of  tagging:  literary  journals  sprang  up 
to  puff  those  tagged,  and  it  acted  as  a  direct 
stimulus  on  the  writers,  and  also  enabled  the 
readers  to  express  intelligent  opinions. 

To-day,  if  we  read  an  essay  by  Howells  we 
know  it  is  good;  we  feel  that  we  are  right  in 
liking  it,  and  we  say  so.  But  if  the  same  essay 
were  signed  X.  X.  Smith,  while  we  might  be 
pleased  at  it,  we  would  not  go  around  saying, 
"Oh,  have  you  read  the  essay  of  a  man  named 
Smith  in  the  Aroma?"  because  it  is  rather  ridic- 
ulous to  enthuse  over  an  unknown  man. 

Now  and  then  the  ordinary  run  of  mortals 


io6        I've  Been  Thinking 

enjoys  the  huge  farce  that  is  enacted  when  a 
number  of  art  critics  dispute  as  to  whether  a 
newly  discovered  picture  is  by  one  of  the  old 
Dutch  masters  or  not.  The  picture  has  swal- 
lowed its  tag,  and  they  are  all  at  sea.  There 
are  two  sides  to  the  question,  and  equally 
eminent  critics  take  opposing  sides. 

Is  it  an  old  but  hideous  daub  by  some  stroll- 
ing Haarlem  sign-painter,  or  is  it  one  of  the 
best  examples  extant  of  Ruysdael?  The  ques- 
tion is  not  an  easy  one,  and  experts  have  to  be 
called  in.  If  it  is  by  an  unknown  and  crude 
sign-painter  it  naturally  possesses  only  such 
value  as  clings  to  an  antique  of  any  sort,  but  if 
it  is  one  of  the  best  examples  extant  of  the 
great  Ruysdael  there  are  a  dozen  millionaires 
who  are  willing  to  pay  thousands  for  it. 

It  is  a  pretty  question,  and  it  furnishes  em- 
ployment for  the  experts.  But  it  shows  the 
necessity  for  tags,  and  I  dare  say  that  some- 
where in  the  vast  unknown  Ruysdael  and  the 


I've  Been  Thinking        107 

itinerant  painter  are  splitting  their  sides  over 
the  discussion.  Only  it  is  a  little  humiliating 
—  to  Ruysdael  —  that  his  picture  is  not  its 
own  tag. 


A  MAN  said  to  me  the  other  day  that  he 
thought  it  was  time  that  people  stopped 
"knocking"  men  who  had  made  their  millions; 
that  a  by-product  of  the  making  of  vast  fortunes 
was  the  development  of  our  country  and  that 
the  multi-millionaire  was  a  benefactor  of  the 
race. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  one  of  the  joys  of 
life  would  be  gone  if  a  fellow  couldn't  have  his 
fling  at  the  man  who  has  corralled  more  of 
the  root  of  all  evil  than  he  himself  has  been 
permitted  to  win. 

When  Mr.  Smith,  who  has  had  hard  work  to 
scratch  $2,000  a  year  out  of  this  hard  old  earth 
of  ours,  reflects  that  at  any  rate  he  has  always 


io8        I've  Been  Thinking 

been  honest,  it  is  a  distinct  pleasure  to  him  to 
hear  that  old  Goldbaggs,  who  is  worth  fifty 
million,  made  $49,999,999-99  by  unscrupulous 
methods  and  that  the  odd  cent  was  given  him. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  a  generous-minded  man  to 
feel  that  if  he  had  always  looked  out  for  num- 
ber one,  if  he  had  never  allowed  personal  con- 
siderations to  come  between  him  and  the 
coveted  dollar,  he  too  would  be,  if  not  a  fifty- 
millionaire,  at  least  very  rich. 

Surely  a  man  who  has  landed  his  fortune  is 
not  so  thin  skinned  and  lacking  in  blood  that 
he  will  begrudge  a  poor  devil  the  fun  of  taunt- 
ing him  with  his  dishonesty. 

If  I  genially  hope  that  some  of  these  wicked 
plutocrats  may  end  their  days  behind  prison 
bars,  it  does  not  hasten  that  day  for  them, 
while  it  does  give  me  a  warm  glow  around  the 
cockles  of  my  heart  to  harbor  such  a  wish,  for 
I  feel  that  it  is  echoed  by  thousands  of  poor 
fellows  like  myself  who  have  been  prevented 


I've  Been  Thinking        109 

by  honesty  —  or  other  reasons  —  from  amass- 
ing a  fortune. 


THE  editor  of  the  paper  was  an  agnostic. 
Fifty  years  ago  he  would  have  been 
called  an  infidel,  but  we  have  softened  our 
speech  in  some  ways.  Now,  although  he  was 
an  agnostic  and  really  knew  nothing  of  a  future 
life,  he  was  the  editor  of  a  live  paper  and  he 
had  to  observe  the  times  and  seasons;  there- 
fore, when  by  the  calendar  he  saw  that  Easter 
was  near  at  hand,  he  determined  to  get  up  an 
Easter  number,  sparing  no  expense  to  make  it 
something  that  would  appeal  alike  to  art  lovers 
and  to  the  multitude. 

But,  although  the  editor  was  an  agnostic, 
it  is  not  to  be  understood  that  he  was  a  bad 
man.  This  is  not  a  fable,  where  everything  is 
told  in  symbols,  and  where  all  the  characters 
are  types.  He  was  a  good  man,  a  kindly  man, 


no        I've  Been  Thinking 

and  if  men  get  into  heaven  by  good  deeds  alone 
(and  there  are  those  who  say  they  do)  this 
agnostic  was  certain  of  a  happy  immortality. 
Can  you  imagine  a  more  pleasant  surprise 
than  for  a  man  to  die  an  agnostic,  after  a  well 
spent  life,  and  to  awake  a  celestial  being, 
knowing  for  a  fact  what  he  had  all  his  life 
doubted  ? 

Among  his  corps  of  writers  there  was  a 
young  Hindoo  with  one  of  those  names  that 
rouse  laughter  among  the  unthinking.  In  the 
office,  where  he  was  cordially  liked,  he  was 
called  "Dan"  for  short,  and  that  name  will  do 
as  well  as  his  own.  He  was  a  word  poet,  and 
he  handled  the  English  tongue  with  an  ease 
that  many  an  American  envied. 

The  Hindoo  was  also  a  good  man,  although 
that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  He  could  pro- 
ject himself  into  a  subject  until  his  whole  being 
was  saturated  with  it,  and  he  had  written  a 
Russian  story  that  more  than  one  Russian 


I've  Been  Thinking       m 

expert  attributed  to  Turgenieff.  He  could  do 
anything  in  words  and  he  could  weave  you  a 
story  of  the  Norse  mythology  and  set  it  forth 
in  a  dress  of  brighter  colors  than  would  have 
been  possible  to  a  man  of  Scandinavian  imagina- 
tion. So  when  the  editor  was  casting  about 
for  the  proper  person  to  write  him  an  Easter 
allegory  he  turned  naturally  to  "Dan."  And 
he  sent  for  him  and  said  to  him  quite  seriously: 
—  "I  want  you  to  write  me  an  allegory  about 
the  Resurrection.  I  want  something  that  will 
appeal  to  church  people.  Nothing  theatrical, 
but  simple  and  human.  You  understand?" 

"I  understand,"  said  this  young  Hindoo, 
and  then  he  went  to  an  art  gallery  and  looked 
at  those  pictures  that  would  help  him,  and  after 
that  he  went  to  his  lodgings  and  cast  himself 
upon  the  floor  and  gave  his  imagination  free 
play  for  an  hour,  and  then  rose  and  wrote  the 
allegory  in  an  hour  and  then  wrote  it  once 
again ;  and  after  that  he  let  it  alone,  for  he  knew 


n2        I've  Been  Thinking 

that  every  added  touch  would  take  something 
of  spontaneity  from  it. 

So  he  brought  it  to  the  editor,  who  read 
it  through  and  said  quite  seriously:  "Almost 
thou  persuadest  me  to  be  a  Christian." 

The  allegory  having  been  written,  it  remained 
to  have  it  illustrated,  and  now  for  once  the 
editor  had  some  thought  of  the  fitness  of  things, 
and  he  said  to  himself,  "I  must  get  a  Christian 
to  illustrate  this,"  and  he  called  his  artists  in 
and  said  to  each  one  in  turn,  "Are  you  a 
Christian?" 

And  it  was  astonishing  the  answers  he  re- 
ceived. Most  of  the  men  growled  out  a  nega- 
tive; some  blushed  and  said  nothing,  but  none 
gave  an  affirmative  answer  until  he  came  to  a 
young  Catholic,  who  said  modestly,  but  in  a 
manly  tone,  "I  hope  so,  sir." 

"Well,  Michael,  you  won't  be  able  to  illus- 
trate this  story,  as  it  is  entirely  out  of  your 
line.  I  want  a  picture  of  the  Resurrection, 


I've  Been  Thinking        113 

and  the  public  would  think  it  sacrilege  if  your 
pen,  which  is  always  associated  with  comic 
work,  should  do  this." 

"I  guess  they  would,  sir,"  said  Michael. 

"Well,  then,  I'll  have  to  get  one  of  you  men 
that  aren't  Christians  to  do  it." 

Then  one  of  the  artists  spoke  up  and  said :  — 

"Well,  we  may  not  be  Christians,  but  we 
aren't  anything  else.  That  is,  we  used  to  go 
to  church  when  we  were  kids." 

"That's  so,"  assented  several. 

"But,"  said  the  editor,  "I  don't  think  any 
one  of  you  can  do  the  kind  of  work  that  will 
fit  the  story  that  'Dan'  has  turned  in.  It's 
too  good  for  so  ephemeral  a  thing  as  a  news- 
paper and  it  ought  to  go  into  a  magazine  and 
be  illustrated  by  an  Elihu  Vedder  or  some  other 
great  symbolist  —  meaning  no  disrespect  to 
you  boys." 

"Ignace  Borowski  can  do  it,  Mr.  Paine," 
said  one  of  the  artists.  "He  won't  draw  news- 


ii4        I  ve  Been  Thinking 

paper  pictures  forever.  He's  as  ambitious  as 
they  make  'em,  and  he's  a  crackerjack  of  a 
man  for  that  symbol  business." 

All  the  other  artists  assented  to  this,  and 
when  Borowski,  who  had  been  at  home  with  a 
cold,  came  to  the  office  next  day  the  agnostic 
gave  him  the  Resurrection  allegory  by  the 
Hindoo,  and  told  him  to  read  it  through  and 
do  his  prettiest  in  the  way  of  illustrating  it. 

Now,  Borowski  was  a  Polish  Hebrew,  who 
had  come  to  this  country  with  his  parents  when 
he  was  four  years  old.  But  he  had  a  knowl- 
edge of  English  literature  that  is  vouchsafed 
to  few  Americans  of  nineteen,  and  he  had  that 
wonderful  temperament  that  is  found  so  often 
among  the  Polish  Hebrews.  He  was  an  artist 
to  his  finger  tips.  He  had  steeped  himself  in 
the  best  examples  of  art  to  be  found  in  this 
country,  having  gained  admittance  to  many 
private  galleries  through  the  good  offices  of  a 
millionaire  compatriot,  and  added  to  that  he 


I've  Been  Thinking        115 

had  condensed  into  twelve  months'  study  the 
work  of  a  three  years'  course  in  art  instruction, 
and,  as  the  boys  said,  he  was  not  long  for  a 
newspaper  office. 

He  read  the  allegory  that  noon  and  his  sym- 
pathetic soul  recognized  a  kindred  spirit  in 
the  work  of  the  Hindoo,  and  by  afternoon  he 
was  hard  at  work  on  the  illustration,  having 
obtained  permission  to  do  the  work  at  home, 
where  he  would  be  free  from  all  distracting 
influences. 

He  felt  he  had  lived  a  lifetime  when  his 
fellow  artists  saw  his  work.  They  were  gen- 
erous in  their  praise.  There  was  no  jealous 
feeling  at  all.  These  Americans  were  honestly 
proud  of  their  Hebrew  brother,  and  the  praise 
of  one's  fellow  craftsmen  outweighs  a  whole 
theaterful  of  others. 

And  now  comes  the  conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter.  The  story  was  unsigned,  the  picture 
had  nothing  but  initials,  and  the  great  public 


n6        I've  Been  Thinking 

did  not  know  that  the  editor  was  an  agnostic; 
but  the  day  after  the  publication  of  this  agnostic- 
Hindoo-Hebrew  story  of  the  Resurrection  ad- 
miring letters  began  to  come  in  from  the 
Christian  public,  and  more  than  one  confessed 
that  the  beautiful  allegory  and  the  spiritual 
picture  had  been  in  the  nature  of  an  uplift. 
But  let  this  letter  tell  its  story. 

"To  THE  EDITOR  OF  — : 

"Dear  Sir, — I  am  not  much  on  doctrines 
or  forms,  but  I  recognize  Christianity  and 
brotherly  love  when  I  see  them,  and  I  want 
to  tell  you  how  much  good  that  allegory  and 
its  accompanying  picture  did  me.  No  man 
who  was  not  good  could  have  done  either  story 
or  picture,  and  I  wish  you  had  printed  the 
names  of  the  author  and  artist.  That  page 
represented  real  Christianity,  and  I  want  to 
thank  you  for  it. 

"ONE  WHO  HAD  DOUBTED." 


I've  Been  Thinking        117 

"They  do  His  will,"   said  the   thoughtful 
man  who  had  known. 


IT  is  only  a  question  of  time  when  every- 
body will  have  an  automobile.  And  when 
everybody  owns  an  automobile  there  will  be 
little  need  for  horses  and  the  breed  will  begin 
to  die  out. 

And  when  the  breed  begins  to  die  out,  it 
follows  as  a  matter  of  course  that  horses  will 
become  more  valuable. 

And  after  another  while  to  own  a  horse  will 
be  a  badge  of  exclusiveness.  And  as  by  that 
time  the  possession  of  automobiles  by  every 
Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  will  have  made  them  too 
plebeian  a  method  of  locomotion  for  the  well- 
to-do,  horses  will  come  into  increasing  favor 
and  will  be  used  all  over  the  country  by  the  rich. 

And  as  there  are  more  rich  people  every 
year  in  this  blessed  country,  so  consequently 


u8        I've  Been  Thinking 

there  will  be  more  horses  until  at  last  the  social 
climbers  will  aspire  to  have  horses  also. 

And  by  that  time  an  enterprising  proletariat 
here  and  there  will  have  found  out  that  there 
is  a  joy  to  be  obtained  from  the  handling  of  a 
horse  that  is  not  yielded  by  the  mastery  of 
insensate  steel,  and  when  that  time  comes  the 
automobile  will  be  doomed,  all  automobiles  will 
be  converted  into  junk,  and  the  neighing  of 
horses  shall  be  heard  in  the  land.  Selah. 


A  PLUTOCRAT,  an  aristocrat,  a  scien- 
tist, and  a  pugilist  found  themselves 
traveling  together.  They  were  all  of  a  size, 
each  one  was  inclined  to  be  arrogant,  and 
while  they  were  outwardly  polite  to  each  other 
there  was  not  a  man  among  them  who  did  not 
look  down  upon  the  other  three. 

And  a  proletariat  walked  afar  off,  beneath 
the  contempt  of  any  one  of  them. 


I've  Been  Thinking        119 

In  the  course  of  their  journeyings  the  four 
entered  into  a  great  building  devoted  to  trade 
and  full  of  men  of  business,  who  as  soon  as 
they  saw  the  plutocrat  began  bowing  to  him 
and  asked  him  to  come  and  take  the  highest 
seat.  "For,"  said  they,  "you  began  with  one 
cent  and  now  you  have  a  thousand  millions." 

The  aristocrat  sniffed,  the  scientist  sneered, 
and  the  pugilist  snorted,  but  there  was  no  doubt 
of  it  that  if  every  dog  has  his  day  the  plutocrat 
was  now  having  his. 

But  the  proletariat  walked  afar  off,  beneath 
the  contempt  of  any  one  of  them. 

After  a  season  they  left  the  hall  of  the  men 
of  trade  and  traveled  to  an  antique  Colonial 
mansion,  which  they  entered.  And  here  the 
aristocrat  took  precedence,  and,  while  the 
other  three  were  treated  with  civility,  it  was  he 
to  whom  the  honors  were  paid.  "For,"  said 
one,  "his  line  runs  back  for  many  generations, 
traced  in  the  bluest  blood." 


120        I've  Been  Thinking 

And  the  plutocrat  said:  "Why,  i  -can  buy 
him  out." 

And  they  bowed  the  plutocrat  out. 

The  pugilist  jeered  audibly  at  the  family  pre- 
tensions and  he  also  was  asked  to  go  outside. 

The  scientist  sneered  to  himself,  but  he  was 
suffered  to  remain,  for  an  ancestor  of  the 
aristocrat  had  been  a  patron  of  a  scientist  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  there  was  a  tradi- 
tion in  the  family  that  it  was  quite  the  proper 
thing  to  condescend  to  science. 

Now  the  scientist  was  plainly  bored  at  the 
rigid  etiquette  and  ceremony  of  the  place, 
and  after  a  time  he  rejoined  his  companions, 
who  were  waiting  outside,  and  in  a  little  while 
the  aristocrat  came  out  also,  being  of  a  restless 
temperament  and  loving  travel. 

But  the  proletariat  walked  afar  off,  beneath 
the  contempt  of  any  one  of  them. 

It  so  happened  that  in  their  travels  they 
came  to  a  university  and  all  four  entered  it. 


I've  Been  Thinking       121 

And  now  it  was  the  scientist  who  was  honored 
and  was  invited  to  a  chair,  the  chair  of  learn- 
ing. Whereat  the  pugilist  openly  scoffed. 

And  he  went  out — with  undergraduate  help. 

For  in  those  days  pugilism  had  not  been 
recognized  as  one  of  the  fine  arts. 

And  the  plutocrat  said:  "What's  the  mat- 
ter with  my  giving  a  million  dollars  to  this 
institution?  I  guess  my  name  will  then  last 
as  long  as  that  of  the  scientist." 

But  he  was  not  a  good  guesser. 

The  aristocrat  said:  "I  understand  the 
reason  for  these  honors  to  our  good  friend  the 
scientist.  What  a  pity  the  fellow  has  not 
blood  as  well  as  brains." 

And  the  proletariat  walked  afar  off,  beneath 
the  contempt  of  any  one  of  them. 

After  a  time  they  took  up  their  travels  again 
and  came  to  a  great  stadium  where  games  and 
trials  of  strength  were  in  progress.  And  it 
was  free  to  all  in  honor  of  the  birthday  of  the 


122        I've  Been  Thinking 

ruler  of  that  country.  Yes,  even  the  proletariat 
was  there! 

The  pugilist  had  begun  to  swagger  as  soon 
as  he  had  come  in  sight  of  the  stadium,  and 
when  the  multitude  saw  him  they  let  forth 
great  cheers,  and  said,  "Make  way  for  the 
only  champion!"  And  he  took  a  seat  of  honor, 
glad  that  his  three  companions  had  lived  to 
see  this  day. 

But  the  scientist  drew  back  in  disgust  and 
marveled  that  the  world  should  worship 
brawn. 

As  for  the  plutocrat,  he  said,  "I  could  give 
every  man  in  this  crowd  a  thousand  dollars 
and  never  notice  it." 

But  he  didn't  do  it. 

The  aristocrat  was  once  more  in  his  element, 
and  he  proceeded  to  patronize  the  pugilist  and 
took  him  off  to  introduce  him  to  some  of  his 
titled  friends.  For  it  is  known  that  for  ages 
the  Bluebloods  have  patronized  sport. 


I've  Been  Thinking        123 

On  a  sudden  a  great  outcry  arose  In  the 
stadium.  Smoke  was  seen,  and  cries  of  fire 
were  heard,  and  men  rushed  hither  and  thither, 
and  the  crowd  swayed  backward  and  forward, 
seized  with  a  panic  that  each  moment  grew 
more  wild.  And  in  the  thick  of  the  crush  was 
the  proletariat,  who  was  as  poor  as  the  pugilist 
and  as  innocent  of  muscle  as  the  scientist  and 
as  destitute  of  blood  as  the  plutocrat  and  as 
weak  of  intellect  as  the  aristocrat. 

But  being  a  brave  man  he  stood  his  ground 
undaunted  and  called  upon  the  crowd  to  stop 
its  mad  rushing,  and  his  voice  was  charged 
with  magnetism,  so  that  the  crowd  obeyed  him 
and  a  great  disaster  was  averted.  But  he 
himself  was  crushed  to  death. 

That  night  the  other  four  were  summoned 
hence  also,  and  it  came  to  pass  that  all  five 
stood  before  the  Gate  of  St.  Peter,  who  asked 
each  one  in  turn  to  give  an  account  of  him- 
self. 


124        I've  Been  Thinking 

Said  the  pugilist,  "I've  knocked  out  more 
men  than  any  prize  fighter  who  ever  lived." 

"Stand  aside,"  said  St.  Peter,  sternly,  look- 
ing toward  the  nethermost  regions. 

"I,"  said  the  scientist,  "gave  my  whole  life 
to  the  propagation  of  the  theory  that  an  apple 
cannot  rise  from  the  grass  to  a  tree  on  account  of 
the  law  of  gravitation." 

"How  did  that  benefit  humanity?"  asked 
St.  Peter. 

"I  was  not  thinking  of  humanity,"  said  the 
scientist. 

"Stand  aside,"  said  St.  Peter. 

The  aristocrat  advanced  with  beribboned 
cap  in  hand  and,  bowing,  said:  — 

"There  is  no  doubt  that  I  will  be  admitted. 
I  am  Percival  Blueblood,  patron  of  learning 
and  the  fancy  and  a  gentleman.  Please  direct 
me  to  the  bath." 

"Stand  aside,"  said  St.  Peter. 

Then  the  plutocrat  advanced  and  said :  — 


I've  Been  Thinking        125 

"I  am  the  richest  man  in  the  world  and  I 
want  an  extra  commodious  suite.  I  have  done 
a  great  deal  of  good  with  my  money  since  I 
turned  fifty." 

"How  many  people  blessed  you  for  the  way 
you  made  your  money  in  the  first  place?" 
asked  St.  Peter. 

"Well,  to  tell  the  exact  truth  —  as  a  man 
ought  to  do  at  such  a  time  as  this  —  I  was 
cursed  not  a  little  in  my  early  years,  but  I  gave 
a  hundred  thou — " 

"Stand  aside,"   said  St.  Peter. 

Last  of  all  came  the  proletariat,  who  said : 

"What  are  the  qualifications,  St.  Peter?" — 

And  St.  Peter  said :  — 

"How  far  can  you  trace  your  ancestry  back?" 

"I  do  not  know  of  a  certainty  who  my  father 
was." 

"Umph!"  said  St.  Peter.  "How  much  wis- 
dom have  you  absorbed?" 

"I  never  went  to  school." 


126        I've  Been  Thinking 

"Worse  and  worse,"  said  St.  Peter.  "How 
many  men  have  you  knocked  out  in  the  arena 
or  in  business?" 

"I  am  afraid  I  never  knocked  any  one  out. 
I  tried  to  keep  within  my  rights  and  meddled 
with  no  one.  I  lacked  initiative,  I  am  afraid." 

"Umph!"  said  St.  Peter.  "Well,  how  much 
money  have  you  given  to  the  poor?" 

"I  had  none  to  give.  I  tried  to  make  it  up 
by—" 

St.  Peter  interrupted  him:  "How  about 
that  time  you  quelled  the  panic  at  the  stadium  ?  " 

"Oh,  that  wasn't  anything!  Any  one  would 
have  done  that." 

"How  is  that?"  said  St.  Peter,  addressing 
the  four  who  had  been  told  to  stand  aside. 

"He  was  worth  a  hundred  men  that  day," 
said  the  plutocrat,  unable  to  express  himself 
save  in  terms  of  comparative  values. 

"He  showed  a  self-sacrifice  worthy  of  a 
scientist,"  said  the  man  of  learning. 


I've  Been  Thinking        127 

"He  acted  like  a  thoroughbred,"  said  the 
aristocrat. 

"He  was  a  man  all  right,"  said  the  pugilist, 
holding  out  his  hand  to  the  pauper. 

"Come  in,"  said  St.  Peter  to  the  proletariat, 
who  left  his  companions  and  entered  in. 

"We  might  as  well  continue  our  journey 
together,"  said  the  aristocrat,  with  a  shrug  of 
his  shoulders. 


SHOULD  a  man  give  up  his  seat  in  a  car 
to  a  woman  ? 

If  a  woman  has  the  same  rights  as  a  man 
(and  she  should  have)  the  man  need  not  give 
up  his  seat,  because  if  a  man  has  the  same 
rights  as  a  woman  (and  he  should  have)  it  does 
not  follow  that  she  should  give  up  her  seat  to  a 
man  who  was  standing. 

But  the  question  involved  is  not  one  of 
rights  but  of  chivalry,  and  by  common  con- 


128        I've  Been  Thinking 

sent  of  ourselves,  the  scrambling,  pushing, 
money-getting  Americans  are  the  most  chival- 
rous nation  on  earth  in  their  attitude  toward 
woman. 

I  do  not  always  give  up  my  seat  to  a  stand- 
ing woman,  but  I  will  confess  here  and  now 
that  when  I  do  not  I  feel  all  through  my  journey, 
or  as  long  as  she  is  standing  in  front  of  me,  that 
I  am  a  particularly  small  and  unattractive 
breed  of  worm.  Sometimes  this  humiliation 
on  my  part  results  in  my  getting  up  tardily  and 
offering  her  my  seat;  sometimes  I  fight  it  out 
with  myself  and  say,  "Sit  still,  you  worm,  you 
have  a  right  to  this  seat  and  if  you  do  get  up 
and  give  it  to  this  woman  you  know  perfectly 
well  that  you  will  have  a  'holier  than  thou' 
feeling  toward  every  other  sedentary  man  in 
the  car,  and  it  is  better  to  be  a  rude  worm  than 
a  polite  prig." 

And  so  I  go  on  sitting,  but  I  am  not  comfort- 
able, and  I  don't  suppose  any  true-blue  Ameri- 


I've  Been  Thinking        129 

can  is  comfortable  if  he  is  sitting  while  a  woman 
stands  in  front  of  him. 
For  in  the  last  analysis  we  are  chivalrous. 


I  HAVE  come  to  the  conclusion  that  when 
I'm  in  a  department  store  I  am  invisible. 
Now,  you  know  when  a  man  goes  up  to  the 
handkerchief  department  and  says  in  fairly 
strong  tones,  "Please  let  me  look  at  your 
slightly  soiled  Irish  linen  real  gentlemen's 
handkerchiefs  at  thirty  cents  a  dozen  marked 
down  from  three  dollars  on  account  of  stock 
taking,"  and  the  young  woman  addressed  looks 
right  through  him  to  the  lady  behind  him  and 
asks  her  what  she  wants,  it  stands  to  reason  that 
the  man  must  be  invisible.  It  has  happened 
to  me  and  it  really  gave  me  an  uncanny  feeling. 
I  hate  to  go  into  a  crowd  in  a  department  store 
for  fear  that  I  will  become  invisible,  and  then 
maybe  a  pickpocket  will  go  through  me. 


130        I've  Been  Thinking 

But  to  drop  foolish  persiflage,  there's  another 
reason  why  I  feel  that  I'm  invisible  in  a  depart- 
ment store,  and  that  is  because  the  young 
worn  —  the  young  ladies  —  talk  right  along 
as  if  they  didn't  see  me  even  if  I  cough  and 
stand  on  my  tiptoes.  Now,  if  I  was  looking 
right  at  a  certain  space  and  suddenly  a  cough 
came  out  of  that  space,  and  yet  I  saw  no  man, 
I'd  stop  talking  and  begin  to  shiver,  although 
I'm  not  superstitious;  but  these  salesladies  are 
evidently  quite  used  to  hearing  coughs  come 
from  invisible  men,  for  they  go  right  on,  only 
pausing  to  take  breath,  and  sometimes  I  blush 
in  my  invisibility  —  by  the  way,  I'd  dearly 
love  to  see  an  invisible  blush  —  wonder  what 
color  it  is  —  I  say  I  blush  because  their  talk 
is  not  only  so  intimate,  but  often  so  acrimonious. 

Now,  they  say  you  won't  hear  acrimonious 
talk  at  the  higher  priced  places,  but  —  you 
know  how  it  is.  Times  aren't  what  they  were  a 
year  or  two  ago,  and  if  I  can  get  good  handker- 


I've  Been  Thinking        131 

chiefs  for  the  washing  at  six  cents  apiece  what's 
the  use  of  going  to  a  Fifth  avenue  store  where 
one  hears  nothing  but  the  most  high-bred  talk 
and  pays  for  it  when  he  buys  his  handkerchiefs  ? 

Besides,  in  some  of  those  higher  priced  shops 
there  is  an  ah*  of  hauteur,  a  sort  of  French 
aristocracy  atmosphere  that  chills  me  so  that  I 
forget  what  I  came  for  and  am  glad  to  escape  to 
the  more  democratic  street.  There's  no  feel- 
ing of  universal  —  er  —  sisterhood  at  those 
swell  places.  The  young  ladies  —  young  prin- 
cesses, I  should  say  —  glide  around  noiselessly 
and  use  the  broad  a,  and  their  tones  are  so 
chilly  that  it  seems  almost  an  insult  to  ask 
them  for  twenty-five-cent  socks.  And,  besides, 
they  always  charge  fifty  cents  for  them  in  those 
places. 

No,  in  the  present  state  of  the  market,  and 
considering  my  bringing  up,  give  me  cheaper 
places,  even  if  I  do  become  invisible  in  them. 

Now,  the  other  day,  I  went  into  a  store  to 


132        I've  Been  Thinking 

get  a  pair  of  mittens  —  my  hands  get  real  cold 
in  the  winter,  and  I  find  that  mittens  are  much 
warmer  than  gloves.  They  say  that  you  can 
dress  in  almost  anything  in  New  York  and  not 
attract  notice,  but  when  I  put  on  a  silk  hat 
and  a  sack  coat  over  a  cardigan  jacket  — 
warmest  thing  in  the  world  a  cardigan  jacket, 
and  only  a  dollar  and  a  half  if  you  look  for 
bargains  —  and  then  draw  on  my  brown  and 
orange  worsted  mittens  and  walk  up  on  the 
dollar  side  of  Fifth  Avenue,  I  always  feel  that  I 
am  no  longer  invisible.  Lucky  that  I  don't 
care.  I'd  rather  be  comfortable  than  fashion- 
able. 

The  other  day  I  was  reading  Herbert 
Spencer's  "Philosophy  of  Style" — when  a 
writer  dies  I  always  read  just  enough  of  him 
to  be  able  to  talk  understandingly  about  him, 
and  make  people  think  I  know  a  heap  about 
him  —  it's  so  handy  at  teas,  you  know.  Well, 
as  I  was  saying,  I  was  reading  Spencer's 


I've  Been  Thinking        133 

"Philosophy  of  Style,"  in  a  pocket  edition,  and 
I  went  in  to  see  a  broker  friend  down  in  Wall 
Street,  one  of  those  pink-of-fashion  men,  you 
know,  and  as  he  was  busy  I  sat  down  and  read 
Spencer.  When  he  came  out  he  saw  the  book, 
and  reaching  out  he  took  it  from  me  and  read 
the  title,  "Philosophy  of  Style." 

He  looked  at  my  high  hat  and  my  cardigan 
jacket  and  my  mittens,  and  then  he  said: 
"Very  appropriate.  Is  there  a  chapter  on 
gum  shoes?"  glancing  at  my  easy  rubbers. 

Well,  of  course,  I  didn't  mind.  I  said  to 
him  good-naturedly:  "Well,  Jack,  you  go 
in  for  money  and  clothes,  but  as  for  me,  give 
me  comfort  and  brains." 

"You  have  the  comfort  all  right,"  said  he. 

But  I'm  jestproof.  Good  heavens!  there 
is  no  man  living  but  has  his  foible,  and  if  it 
pleases  Jack  to  laugh  at  mine  —  why,  let  him. 
If  I  went  in  for  being  a  glass  of  fashion  and  a 
mold  of  form  I  would  only  make  myself 


134        I've  Been  Thinking 

ridiculous  and  be  uncomfortable  into  the  bar- 
gain; so  I  say,  "Why  not  let  'em  know  you 
don't  think  you're  a  leader  of  fashion?"  and 
I  dress  accordingly.  And  if  you'll  try  those 
mittens  you'll  be  a  good  deal  warmer.  They 
beat  castor  gloves  all  hollow  and  they're  only 
one-tenth  of  the  price.  Twelve  and  a  half  cents 
for  each  mitten. 

I  tell  you  that  just  as  soon  as  you  get  to  the 
point  where  you  don't  care  whether  you  make 
a  guy  of  yourself  or  not  you  find  that  you  can 
put  money  in  the  bank  even  on  your  slender 
salary.  That  is,  you  can  if  you  don't  have  to 
blow  it  in  on  bread  for  the  children.  This 
bread  for  the  children  is  what  is  keeping  thou- 
sands of  men  in  the  straight  and  narrow  way. 
There'd  be  more  drunkards  and  more  merry- 
making of  all  kinds  if  it  wasn't  for  this  eternal 
bread-buying. 

This  talk  of  college  is  foolishness.  Let  a 
young  man  begin  by  supporting  the  old  man, 


I've  Been  Thinking        135 

and  when  he  has  supplied  him  with  the  luxuries 
that  the  father  went  without  in  order  that  the 
boy  might  have  bread,  and  incidentally  has 
learned  a  great  deal  more  of  the  world  than 
they  teach  at  most  colleges,  then  let  him  take 
a  term  or  two  at  Harvard  so  as  to  give  him 
the  ability  to  move  easily  about  in  one  of 
those  high-priced  stores  among  the  princesses. 
But  the  knowledge  of  the  world  should  come 
first  along  with  the  daily  roll  for  the  old  gen- 
tleman. 

And  if  after  reading  this  any  one  can  see 
through  me  it  proves  what  I  started  out  to 
prove  —  that  I'm  invisible. 


A    CERTAIN    enormously    wealthy   Par- 
venu, who  thought  he  had  a  love  for 
art,  but  who  bought  by  name  and  fame  only, 
expended  $20,000  for  which  he  secured  five 
small,    but   fine,    examples   of   the    Barbizon 


136        I've  Been  Thinking 

school.  And  as  soon  as  the  French  pictures 
were  hung  in  his  drawing-room  there  ap- 
peared to  him  out  of  the  Everywhere  a  man 
who  said: 

"You  have  five  magnificent  paintings  for 
which  you  paid  magnificent  prices.  It  will 
doubtless  console  the  painters,  who  are  wan- 
dering in  Shadowland,  to  know  that  the  work 
that  would  hardly  buy  them  bread  when  they 
were  upon  earth  will  now  keep  an  art  dealer 
in  plenty  for  a  lifetime.  But  why  have  you 
not  bought  beautiful  American  pictures?  You 
are  not  French.  It  is  true  that  art  has  no 
nationality,  but  you  should  foster  the  art  of 
the  men  who  live  under  the  same  flag  as  you, 
even  as  you  profess  to  protect  the  interests  of 
your  workingmen." 

And  the  Parvenu  said:  "I  am  an  Ameri- 
can of  the  Americans  and  believe  in  American 
engines  and  American  pluck  and  American 
brains,  but  those  French  make  a  business  of 


I've  Been  Thinking        137 

art,  and  I  am  told  that  American  artists  are 
merely  imitators." 

"Fool!"  said  the  ghostly  visitor.    "Look!" 

And  a  vision  appeared  before  the  Parvenu 
and  he  saw  a  lover  of  art  clad  in  the  peculiar 
fashion  of  fifty  years  hence.  And  he  was  buy- 
ing five  small  American  pictures,  for  which  he 
willingly  paid  $50,000. 

And  when  the  Parvenu  saw  the  prices  they 
had  fetched  he  said:  "When  were  those  painted 
and  by  whom,  for  they  must  be  beautiful  to 
be  worth  so  much." 

"Beautiful  were  they  before  ever  a  price  was 
set  on  them,"  said  the  ghostly  visitor.  "Beau- 
tiful also  were  these,  for  which  you  have  ex- 
pended a  fortune,  when  their  creators  finished 
them  and  sold  them  for  a  handful  of  francs  to 
keep  the  pot  boiling.  These  pictures  that  you 
see  being  bought  fifty  years  hence  are  the 
works  of  American  contemporaries  of  yours. 
To-day  they  are  picking  up  a  living  in  the 


138        I've  Been  Thinking 

West,  in  New  York,  in  New  England,  and  are 
thankful  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  that 
they  may  work  at  the  art  they  love.  Fancy 
what  they  would  think  if  a  millionaire  of 
feeling,  having  eyes  to  see  and  an  under- 
standing to  appreciate  the  poetry  of  their  land- 
scapes, should  pay  generous  prices  for  these 
painted  poems  that  are  going  for  little  more 
than  the  cost  of  the  paint  that  is  in  them. 
For  then,  my  friend,  these  artists  would  not 
need  to  wait  until  they  reached  Shadowland 
before  they  heard  that  their  names  had  be- 
come famous." 

"Lord,  give  me  eyes  to  see,"  said  the  Par- 
venu, as  the  vision  vanished. 


IN  some  recent  magazine  stories  the  thing 
that  counts  seems  to  be  not  so  much  what 
the  people  do  and  say  as  where  and  how  they 
say  it. 


I've  Been  Thinking        139 

Let  us  discover  two  characters  in  the  parlor, 
and  open  the  conversation  in  this  way: 

Charles  Darcey  rose  to  his  feet  and  gazed 
first  at  Marie  and  then  at  a  steel  engraving. 

Marie's  eyes  followed  his,  and  then  went 
beyond  and  back  of  him  to  a  French  mirror. 
It  was  at  least  a  minute  before  Charles  spoke, 
and  in  that  time  his  hazel  eyes  traveled  around 
and  took  in  seven  chairs,  the  armchair,  the 
sofa,  the  desk,  and  the  curtains. 

Nor  were  her  eyes  idle,  even  though  she  did 
not  speak.  She  looked  at  the  handsome  Turkish 
rug,  at  the  cartridge  paper  on  the  wall  —  it 
was  a  robin' s-egg  blue  —  at  the  chandelier  and 
then  at  him. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  say,"  said  he  at  last, 
casting  his  eyes  upon  the  Japanese  rug. 

"Why  have  you  called,  then?"  said  she, 
opening  a  magazine  with  nervous  fingers  and 
reading  some  of  the  advertisements. 

"I  came,"  said  he,  as  he  played  with  a  silver 


140        I've  Been  Thinking 

paper-cutter  that  had  been  secured  at  a  bar- 
gain sale,  "to  say  good-by." 

"Good-by?"  she  said  in  questioning  tones, 
rising  and  sniffing  a  Marechal  Niel  rose  that 
was  stuck  in  his  button-hole. 

He  looked  intently  at  an  etching  by  Field 
which  hung  over  the  desk.  It  depicted  a 
sylvan  scene  in  the  depths  of  winter;  but  he 
did  not  think  of  that.  "Yes,  good-by,"  he 
said,  dropping  the  paper-cutter  inadvertently. 

It  fell  with  a  tinkling  sound  upon  the  marble 
center-table  and  thence  to  the  India  rug.  The 
sound  roused  Marie. 

"Well,  then  I  suppose  we  must  part." 

"Your  supposition  is  the  right  one,"  said  he, 
taking  up  a  ten-cent  monthly. 

She  picked  up  a  copy  of  the  latest  novel  and 
opened  at  the  last  chapter.  It  might  have  had 
a  significance,  but  if  it  had  it  escaped  her.  A 
fly  flew  in  at  the  window  and  settled  on  her 
cheek,  but  she  did  not  notice  it. 


I've  Been  Thinking        141 

Charles  leaned  forward  and  brushed  the 
fly  from  her  delicate  cheek.  He  had  ceased  to 
care  for  her,  but  he  was  not  above  doing  her  a 
common  courtesy.  He  read  a  short  poem  in  the 
ten-cent  monthly.  At  last  he  said,  "You  have 
not  answered  me." 

"I  did  not  know  that  you  had  asked  me 
anything,"  she  replied,  turning  her  head  so 
as  to  see  the  little  oil  painting  of  a  flock 
of  sheep,  which  her  father  had  won  at  a 
raffle. 

"Oh,  Marie,  don't  you  understand  me?" 
he  cried  in  tones  of  anguish,  as  he  stepped  to 
the  mirror  and  tied  his  cravat. 

Marie  was  silent.  She  did  not  understand 
him.  She  hated  herself  for  it,  and  tapped  the 
Smyrna  rug  with  her  foot  as  she  had  seen 
actresses  do  under  stress  of  feeling. 

Charles  rose  and  walked  to  the  door.  He 
turned  and  looked  over  the  shoulder  of  his 
pepper-and-salt  suit.  All  was  at  an  end. 


142        I've  Been  Thinking 

Marie  picked  up  a  magazine  and  looked  at 
the  pictures. 

There  was  a  sound  of  a  closing  door.  Marie 
was  alone  with  the  book  and  magazines,  the 
paper-cutter,  the  seven  chairs,  the  armchair, 
the  sofa,  the  center-table,  the  mirror,  the  desk, 
the  lace  curtains,  the  pictures,  and  the  Syrian 
rug. 

The  lunch  bell  rang. 

She  hastened  to  the  dining-room. 


JUST  a  heart-to-heart  talk  upon  the   twin 
subjects   of   servants   and   murders.     One 
naturally  leads  to  the  other. 

And,  at  the  start,  I  want  to  say  that  I  totally 
disapprove  of  servants  as  a  subject  of  con- 
versation. The  trials  of  housekeepers  should 
be  a  tabooed  topic.  And  I  will  say  the  same 
of  murder  trials. 
For  myself,  I  make  it  a  point  never  to  read 


I've  Been  Thinking        143 

about  murders.  I  can  get  all  I  want  from  the 
headlines.  To  be  sure,  there  are  exceptions 
to  every  rule;  there  was  Robin  Graves,  who 
murdered  his  great-grandmother  on  a  dare 
from  his  fellow  medical  students.  I  didn't 
read  anything  about  it,  but  I  heard  people 
discussing  it,  and  it  had  elements  of  interest 
in  it.  And  I  always  thought  that  Probyn- 
Clew  case  far  from  dull.  You  may  remember 
that  Probyn  sent  Clew  a  poisoned  caramel  on 
the  very  day  that  Clew  sent  Probyn  a  poisoned 
peppermint,  and  the  papers  were  full  of  it. 
I  gathered  enough  to  enable  me  to  hold  my  end 
up  when  I  encountered  a  person  with  bad 
enough  taste  to  discuss  the  subject.  It  was 
deplorable  the  way  people  harped  on  that  case. 
Then  take  the  affair  of  the  landlady  who 
murdered  all  her  boarders  because  they  resented 
a  raise  in  the  price  of  board.  What  a  mine  of 
wealth  that  was  to  the  reporters!  My  paper 
had  six  columns  a  day  for  twenty  days,  and  I 


i44        I've  Been  Thinking 

just  had  to  read  that  because  there  was  nothing 
else,  but  politics,  in  the  paper;  but  I  felt  that 
it  was  no  subject  for  a  person  of  any  refinement. 
Yet  I  knew  one  man  who  makes  quite  a  pre- 
tense of  being  up  in  the  English  classics,  and 
he  knew  every  point  in  the  trial.  I  could  not 
trip  him  up  on  a  single  bit  of  evidence.  That 
experience  just  about  destroyed  my  faith  in 
humanity.  My  brother  said  that  I  talked  of 
nothing  else  but  that  trial,  and  he  was  quite 
right.  I  was  completely  absorbed  in  trying 
to  find  some  person  who  knew  nothing  of  it. 
And  at  last  I  did  find  an  old  lady  who  never 
reads  the  papers.  She  had  not  even  heard 
about  it.  She  wanted  to  discuss  one  of  Fiske's 
books  on  evolution,  but  I  said,  "See  here,  Mrs. 
Delancey,  you're  a  rara  avis.  You're  the 
first  person  I've  met  who  has  not  heard  about 
this  unique  series  of  murders,  and  I'm  just 
going  to  tell  you  the  whole  story  so  that  you 
may  see  for  yourself  what  it  is  that  fills  people's 


I've  Been  Thinking        145 

minds  in  these  degenerate  days."  And  so  I 
told  her  the  whole  story  and  she  listened 
breathless;  this  cultivated  woman  was  posi- 
tively as  interested  as  if  she  had  been  a  police- 
man, off  (or  on)  duty,  and  discussing  shop 
with  a  brother  officer.  Oh,  I  was  sickened. 

After  a  while  she  wanted  to  shift  off  to  evo- 
lution so  that  she  wouldn't  dream  of  the  horrible 
murders,  but  I  looked  at  my  watch  and  saw 
that  I  had  a  train  to  catch,  and  again  Fiske 
was  side-tracked.  Fiske,  with  his  lucidity  and 
logic  and  sweet  reasonableness,  was  side-tracked 
for  a  horrible  murder. 

Just  as  I  was  coming  away  I  asked  my  hostess, 
casually,  if  she  remembered  the  Bond  Street 
murder,  and  she  did  remember  that,  for  her 
father  lived  on  the  very  same  block  at  the 
time  it  was  committed.  I  actually  missed  my 
train  because  I  sat  down  to  hear  her  talk  about 
it.  It  was  like  a  bit  out  of  Ainsworth.  I  was 
not  born  when  it  happened,  and  she  was  but 


146        I've  Been  Thinking 

a  girl,  but  her  father  had  the  bad  habit  of  dis- 
cussing such  things  in  the  presence  of  his 
children,  and  it  had  made  such  an  impression 
upon  her  infant  mind  that  here  she  was  re- 
tailing it  to  me.  As  a  bit  of  local  history  con- 
temporaneous with  the  days  of  Irving  and 
Cooper,  it  had  a  certain  value;  and  that  is 
what  appealed  to  me. 

But  to  return  to  servants.  There  is  abso- 
lutely no  excuse  for  talking  about  the  Bridgets 
and  Christinas  and  Maries  and  Dinahs  that 
come  and  go. 

Mind  you,  I  am  not  narrow-minded;  there 
are  circumstances  that  alter  cases.  If  there 
is  a  servant  who  excites  your  interest  in  hu- 
manity, it  is  allowable  to  talk  about  her.  Now 
we  had  a  maid  for  a  couple  of  days  last  week 
who  had  evidently  seen  better  days  and  many 
of  them.  The  way  she  broke  crockery  showed 
that  she  did  not  do  it  with  malice  prepense, 
nor  yet  out  of  sheer  carelessness  as  an  ordinary 


I've  Been  Thinking        147 

maid  would  have  done.  She  had  evidently 
been  used  to  being  waited  upon  and  had  no 
manual  dexterity  whatever.  In  fact  she  told 
me  that  she  had  never  lived  out  before.  Her 
name  was  Mamie  Brannigan. 

We  had  one  girl  who  refused  to  go  when  her 
day  was  up.  She  was  absolutely  worthless 
as  a  cook,  but  she  liked  her  room,  and  she 
wanted  to  board  with  us.  My  mother  wanted 
me  to  eject  her  forcibly,  but  I  am  not  a 
bouncer  —  and  she  was.  Anyway,  I  felt  it 
was  a  sort  of  compliment  to  our  house  that 
she  wanted  to  stay,  and  so  we  allowed  her 
to  keep  the  room.  She  paid  board  and  we 
handed  her  money  over  as  wages  to  her  suc- 
cessors. 

Servants  are  queer  any  way  you  look  at 
them;  but  this  everlasting  talking  about  them, 
when  we  are  surrounded  by  art  and  literature 
and  the  good  deeds  of  philanthropists,  makes 
me  wonder  what  we  are  coming  to.  I  think 


148        I've  Been  Thinking 

that  men  are  almost  as  bad  as  women  in  this 
matter.  A  man  is  just  as  likely  to  be  interested 
in  our  case  of  the  servant-boarder  as  a  woman 
is,  and  I  never  go  out  anywhere  where  there 
are  some  strangers  present,  but  I  am  asked  to 
tell  about  her,  and  that  always  starts  the  ser- 
vant question;  and  I  am  generally  asked  to 
take  the  floor,  because  we  have  had  such  queer 
experiences. 

I  have  time  for  only  one  more  anecdote, 
but  I  must  tell  that.  Summer  before  last 
mother  got  a  treasure  of  a  cook.  She  could 
cook,  she  was  respectful  and  respectable,  she 
didn't  break  and  she  was  honest,  but 

Well,  her  "but"  was  that  she  would  not  go 
to  the  mountains.  Now  we  take  a  furnished 
house  in  the  mountains  every  summer,  but  we 
can't  get  a  servant  up  there,  and  Nadjezda 
(she's  a  Pole)  could  not  be  induced  to  go.  So 
we  went  without  her,  and  she  lived  in  our  city 
house  on  half  wages  all  summer  long  and 


I've  Been  Thinking        149 

cooked  for  herself,  while  mother  went  to  the 
mountains  and  cooked  for  herself.  Still,  it 
was  a  sort  of  comfort  to  think  that  somewhere 
we  had  a  capable  cook  cooking. 

I  sometimes  wish  that  some  of  the  incapable 
ones  could  be  cooking  somewhere. 


YOU  were  thinking  yesterday,  my  good 
woman,  that  you  were  a  little  better  than 
the  lady  who  called  on  you  although  she  has 
more  money  than  you. 

But  are  you  really  better  than  she? 

Your  husband  is  a  salaried  man  and  her 
husband  is  an  oil  magnate. 

Of  course  that  does  not  necessarily  make 
her  any  better  than  you,  because  we  all  know 
that  your  husband  had  a  college  education  and 
her  husband  was  a  day  laborer. 

But  why  should  your  husband's  education 
or  her  husband's  wealth  have  anything  to  do 


150        I've  Been  Thinking 

with  you  or  her?  Let  us  cut  the  husbands 
out  of  the  proposition. 

Well,  then,  she  has  more  money  than  you. 

Does  that  make  you  any  better  than  she? 
Is  the  lack  of  money  an  unmixed  blessing 
carrying  with  it  social  superiority? 

She  (with  a  certain  touch  of  vulgarity,  owing 
to  her  ancestors,  which  you  have  not,  thanks 
to  your  ancestors)  has  a  much  kinder  heart 
than  you  have. 

She  honestly  tries  to  be  herself  in  spite  of  the 
money  she  has,  while  you  have  social  amibitions 
that  cause  you  to  be  snobbish. 

You  think  you  are  better  than  she. 

She  never  thinks  about  social  status. 

You  feel  bitter  toward  her  because  her  hus- 
band is  immensely  wealthy. 

She  feels  well  disposed  toward  you  because 
she  thinks  both  you  and  your  husband  are 
clever  —  and  with  her,  clever  has  a  better 
meaning  than  the  commonly  accepted  one. 


I've  Been  Thinking        151 

No,  in  spite  of  her  money  and  her  position 
she  is  more  of  a  woman  than  you  are  in  spite 
of  your  blood  and  your  husband's  education. 


CLEON  told  me  the  other  day  that  being 
of  a  mind  to  own  sets  of  Balzac  and 
Shakespeare,  neither  of  which  he  happened  to 
have  in  his  bachelor  apartments,  he  dropped  a 
line  to  a  well-known  publisher  and  the  next 
day  the  delivery  wagon  stopped  at  his  door, 
the  books  were  handed  out,  his  man  took 
them  in,  and  that  was  the  end  of  it.  Oh,  no, 
not  quite  the  end;  when  he  settles  his  bills  for 
the  quarter  he  will  pay  for  his  books. 

Now  I  dare  say  that  Cleon  will  get  some 
good  from  his  books  because  he  is  really  fond 
of  reading  when  it  doesn't  interfere  with  his 
golf.  And  he  purchased  handsome  editions, 
fresh  from  the  binder's,  spick-span  and  flawless, 
with  never  a  dog's  ear  or  a  crease  in  the  leather. 


152        I've  Been  Thinking 

But  he  had  no  fun  out  of  the  buying.  He  saw 
an  advertisement,  he  sent  in  an  order,  and 
almost  by  magic  the  books  were  on  his  table. 
Yet  think  of  the  price  he  pays  for  them !  Two 
hundred  good  dollars. 

Yesterday  I  had  some  money  to  spend.  I 
say  I  had  money  to  spend.  Don't  think  for  a 
moment  that  money  that  buys  shoes  and  sacks 
and  sheetings  and  socks  is  money  spent.  If 
that  were  the  case  I  could  be  said  to  spend 
money  every  day  of  my  life,  for  my  children 
will  walk  on  their  feet,  and  they  demand  pro- 
tection from  the  elements  no  matter  how  high 
may  be  the  price  of  cloth.  No,  the  money  I 
had  yesterday  was  a  gift  to  be  actually  spent  as 
foolishly  as  I  might  devise. 

Like  Cleon,  I  too  wanted  books,  for  your 
circulating  library  is  only  a  temporary  assuager 
of  literary  hunger  and  one  book  owned  is 
worth  three  "taken  out."  But  ten  dollars  will 
not  carry  one  as  far  as  will  two  hundred  unless 


I've  Been  Thinking        153 

care  is  taken  and  discrimination  is  used.  So 
I  went,  not  to  a  store  where  they  deal  in  books 
fresh  from  the  mint,  but  to  a  shop  devoted 
primarily  to  the  cause  of  dry  goods  where  they 
were  having  a  "hurt  book"  sale,  and  if  you 
will  believe  me,  the  very  first  thing  that  assailed 
my  eye  was  a  set  of  Shakespeare  that  looked 
hurt  beyond  any  book  physician's  aid.  Limp 
leather  bindings  that  abused  their  prerogative; 
the  box  in  which  they  were  huddling  together, 
slit  and  cracked  and  broken.  How  often  hands 
had  seized  those  coverings!  They  looked  as 
if  they  had  been  the  "vade  mecum"  of  a  book- 
lover  for  a  score  of  years.  And  my  Shake- 
speare at  home  is  all  crowded  into  one  volume, 
so  that  "The  Tempest"  rages  about  the  ears 
of  "The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,"  and 
"Hamlet,"  with  scant  regard  for  royal  rights, 
treads  on  the  toes  of  poor  "King  Lear." 

I  opened  one  of  the  volumes  and  found  to 
my  surprise  that  the  pages  were  immaculate. 


154        I've  Been  Thinking 

Not  a  word  had  been  read!  There  were 
Shakespeare's  wit  and  poetry  and  splendor  and 
melody  and  humanity  untouched  by  any  save 
a  cursory  eye.  I  asked  the  maiden,  who, 
temporarily  divorced  from  the  ribbon  and  lace 
counter,  was  giving  her  attention  to  the  world 
of  letters,  what  the  set  was  worth. 

"Five  dollars"  was  the  answer  that  fell  on 
my  hungry  ears.  And  I  had  seen  the  same  set 
advertised  for  fifteen!  Twelve  green-backed 
volumes  there  were,  and  they  might  be  mine 
for  five  greenbacks.  Never  leaped  sword  from 
scabbard  sooner  than  leaped  my  money  from 
its  pocket.  I  looked  over  my  shoulder,  fear- 
ing that  some  other  book-lover  would  grab  the 
box  of  books  away  from  me  and  claim  them. 
I  examined  them  carefully  as  a  mother  does 
her  boy  when  he  comes  crying  into  the  house 
after  a  fall,  and  I  found  that  they  looked  more 
hurt  than  they  were.  They  were  really  more 
frightened  than  hurt.  Incessant  pawing  by 


I've  Been  Thinking        155 

unfriendly  hands  is  an  awful  ordeal  to  which 
to  subject  a  book  full  of  kindly  instincts,  as 
all  of  Shakespeare's  books  always  are.  But 
they  had  fallen  on  friendly  hands  at  last,  and 
hereafter  they  shall  be  handled  with  the  respect 
due  their  contents. 

And  right  here  let  me  thank  the  kind  people 
who  treated  Shakespeare  so  cavalierly.  This 
may  sound  inconsistent;  but  are  not  my  thanks 
due  those  who  caused  the  bard  to  depreciate 
two-thirds  in  money  value? 

I  can  see  them,  typical  shoppers,  out  for 
bargains  in  scrim  and  Hamburg  edgings, 
making  a  hurried  visit  to  the  book  counter  in 
hope  of  getting  a  complete  and  unabridged  set 
of  Mary  J.  Holmes's  works.  And  they  stumbled 
on  Shakespeare.  Of  course  they  had  heard  of 
him  before.  Cheap  shoppers  are  not  so  igno- 
rant as  you  imagine,  lofty  reader.  They  had 
often  heard  of  him  before,  but  they  supposed 
that  writing  plays  for  Henry  Irving  to  produce 


156        I've  Been  Thinking 

kept  him  too  busy  to  do  anything  in  the  book 
line.  Curious  to  see  what  sort  of  books  he 
had  written,  they  tumbled  them  out  of  the  box 
and  tested  the  limpness  of  the  covers  until 
those  verdant  leathers  were  hopelessly  crippled 
and  doomed  to  limp  forever.  They  dropped 
them  on  the  floor  because  the  bindings  were  so 
curiously  slippery  —  so  unlike  the  bindings  of 
Mary  J.  Then  they  picked  them  up  by  those 
same  covers  as  one  lifts  a  rabbit  by  its  ears,  and 
then  they  looked  inside.  The  interior  bore  a 
striking  resemblance  to  poetry,  but  there 
seemed  to  be  a  paucity  of  rhyme;  and  if  it  was 
conversation  it  was  terribly  broken  up  by 
abbreviated  names.  Back  into  the  box  they 
were  hustled  to  await  the  coming  of  another 
shopper  with  peaked  face,  glittering  eye,  and 
hurried  step,  and  hour  by  hour  the  value  of 
that  set  of  Shakespeare  as  leather  and  paper 
sank  low  and  lower  still,  until  one  third  of  its 
worth  was  all  that  was  left  to  it.  In  another 


I've  Been  Thinking        157 

week  I  might  have  had  it  for  the  asking,  per- 
haps. But  you  shoppers,  you  did  not  hurt  the 
thought  in  the  book  nor  were  the  typography 
and  the  margins  joggled  awry  by  your  con- 
temptuous hands.  I  can  sink  back  across  the 
arms  of  my  easiest  chair  and  find  as  much  of 
Shakespeare's  divine  essence  as  Cleon  shall 
find  in  his  hundred-dollar  edition. 

Therefore,  I  thank  you,  careless  shoppers. 
When  the  glad  season  comes  that  reckless 
shoppers  turn  their  thoughts  to  books,  come 
out,  ye  bargainers,  and  depreciate  a  com- 
plete set  of  "The  Tatler"  for  me.  Only  spare 
the  integrity  of  the  leaves.  If  you  but  let  the 
leafage  rival  that  of  Vallombrosa  I  care  not 
how  you  smut  the  covers,  for  there  are  deter- 
gents that  shall  kill  all  germs. 

When  I  had  secured  my  Shakespeare,  I 
thought  that  there  might  peradventure  be  a 
set  of  Scott  for  a  song.  I  saw  an  "Ivanhoe" 
here  and  a  "Redgauntlet"  there  and  a  "Lady 


158         I've  Been  Thinking 

of  the  Lake"  hard  by,  and  I  asked  the  maiden, 
late  of  the  lace  department,  whether  they  had 
Scott's  works  complete.  She  walked  up  and 
down  and  cast  a  searching  eye  over  the  mass 
of  books. 

"No,"  said  she,  finally,  with  an  omniscient 
smile,  "there's  nothing  left  but  his  poems  and 
the  Waverley  Novels." 

A  crippled  Shakespeare,  with  reasoning  powers 
still  intact,  might  seem  to  be  enough  of  a  bar- 
gain for  one  day,  but  at  another  table  I  found 
scores  of  essayists  on  dress  parade  and  waiting 
to  be  transferred  when  it  should  suit  the  will  of 
some  random  purchaser.  They  were  massed  in 
a  solid  phalanx,  for  they  had  been  so  unattract- 
ive to  the  rushing  shoppers  that  they  had  scarce 
given  them  a  toss.  There  was  nothing  limp 
about  them.  There  they  stood,  undismayed, 
ready  for  friend  or  foe,  pipeclayed  and  sol- 
dierly, with  "shining  morning  faces."  And 
nineteen  cents  would  buy  their  discharge! 


I've  Been  Thinking        159 

What  do  you  think,  you  thoughtless  persons 
who  spend  a  hundred  dollars  for  a  week  at  the 
Rangeley  Lakes  —  what  do  you  think  of  "A 
Week  on  the  Concord"  for  nineteen  cents? 
And  while  you  can  do  no  more  than  catch  some 
fish  that  will  fade  in  a  few  days  I  can  catch  and 
keep  forever  thoughts  as  quaint  and  as  homely 
as  Thoreau  was  himself. 

O  Cleon,  you  with  your  plethoric  purse  have 
never  learned  the  delights  of  working  for  your 
money's  worth.  You  spent  two  hundred  dol- 
lars without  the  fun  of  picking  and  choosing, 
while  I,  for  less  than  ten,  have  picked  up  a 
library  of  good  fellows;  and  enjoyed  the  search 
withal. 

The  book-hurting  shoppers  did  not  toss  and 
gore  Balzac,  for  the  very  name  seemed  to  them 
something  "scientific,"  and  they  passed  him 
by  as  if  they  had  been  so  many  Levites.  Their 
unjust  discrimination  against  him  was  my  loss, 
for  I  still  lack  a  Balzac.  Next  year  it  would 


160        I've  Been  Thinking 

pay  you  to  dip  into  the  Frenchman  a  little,  ye 
scrim-hunting  ladies.  He  is  easily  handled 
and  although  in  the  department-store  edition 
his  covers  are  not  limp,  you  can  bring  down  his 
price  appreciably  if  you  follow  bargain-sale 
tactics.  And  when  you  have  bepawed  him  and 
rejected  him  as  worse  than  rubbish,  will  you 
kindly  drop  me  a  postal  that  I  may  go  to  see 
whether  he  has  been  let  down  to  my  stature  ? 

But  for  one  afternoon's  browsing,  credit  me 
with  Macaulay's  "  Literary  Essays,"  Carlyle's 
"Sartor  Resartus,"  Loti's  "Iceland  Fisher- 
man," Emerson's  "English  Traits,"  Curtis's 
"Prue  and  I,"  Thoreau's  "Walden"  and  his 
"Week  on  the  Concord,"  and  Shakespeare  on 
crutches,  and  there  is  still  some  virtue  in  the 
ten  dollars.  Cleon,  I  wouldn't  change  places 
with  you  unless,  together  with  your  generous 
balance  at  the  banker's,  I  could  keep  my  ability 
to  tire  out  a  dollar. 


I've  Been  Thinking        161 

DO  you  want  to  know  why  the  maid  left 
after  the  third  hot  night?  I  may  be 
mistaken,  but  if  you  will  take  me  up  to  the 
room  she  occupied  I  may  be  able  to  find  a  clue, 
and  there  is  certainly  nothing  about  me  that 
resembles  Sherlock  Holmes. 

What  a  large  closet! 

No?    Not  a  closet?    The  maid's  room? 

Oh,  la,  la!     (As  they  say  in  France.) 

Do  you  remember  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  ? 

Poor  maid! 

And  what  an  apology  for  a  window.  And 
how  hot  the  tin  roof  makes  the  room  even  this 
cool  day. 

Wasn't  it  awful  the  way  some  people  treated 
slaves  ? 

Makes  me  simply  shudder  to  read  the 
accounts. 

So  your  maid  stayed  through  the  third  hot 
night  ? 


1 62        I've  Been  Thinking 

Courageous  girl! 

I  would  have  left  after  the  first  night's  ex- 
perience. 

It  was  hot  on  your  own  floor  with  all  the  win- 
dows open  and  a  direct  draft  over  the  bed. 

But  think  of  that  room. 

"Elizabeth  or  the  Exiles  of  Siberia!" 

Only  they  were  cold. 

And  both  you  and  your  husband  pillars  of 
the  church. 

You  might  install  an  electric  fan. 

That  would  help. 

Three  nights  in  a  hot-box! 

Pjewi 


TTTHEN  a  man's  label  is  on  he  has  no 
V  T  idea  what  people  really  think  of  him. 
I  know  of  a  pianist  in  New  York  who  has  a 
label  that's  worth  a  good  deal  to  him.  Why, 
with  his  label  on  he  can  make  at  least  twenty- 


I've  Been  Thinking        163 

five  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  socially  he  is 
a  lion  —  with  his  label  on,  mind  you. 

He  is  such  a  compeller  of  tone  that  he  can 
make  women  weep  —  when  they  know  who 
he  is  —  and  Paderewski  himself  is  said  to  have 
said  that  there  is  no  one  he  would  rather  hear 
play  than  this  same  bald  head  —  for  he  hap- 
pens to  be  that  rara  avis,  a  bald-headed  pianist. 

Zabritski,  who  was  born  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Music,  of 
New  England  parents,  is  the  soul  of  good- 
nature, and,  except  when  he  is  on  a  concert 
tour,  he  hasn't  a  particle  of  big  head.  He  once 
told  me  that  when  he  is  on  a  concert  tour  he 
finds  that  a  certain  amount  of  big-headedness 
is  expected  of  him  by  his  audiences  in  order  to 
convince  them  that  he  is  the  real  goods,  and  so 
sometimes  he  refuses  to  play  on  a  piano  after 
he  has  sat  down  to  it  and  makes  the  audience 
wait  until  a  better  one  is  brought  up  from  the 
local  warerooms. 


164        I've  Been  Thinking 

Of  course  the  papers  next  day  call  him  a 
crank,  but  they  admit  that  he  is  a  man  of 
tenacity  of  purpose,  and  that  is  a  beloved 
American  trait,  so  he  scores  a  hit  whenever  he 
is  cranky  that  way.  But  the  crankiness  is  all 
assumed  and  he  often  laughs  about  it  among 
his  friends  and  says,  for  the  matter  of  that,  one 
piano  is  as  bad  as  another  when  one  is  playing 
off  the  main  line. 

All  this  is  when  he  has  his  label  on.  Now 
I'll  tell  you  about  something  that  happened 
when  his  label  was  off  and  he  was  just  an  ordi- 
nary person. 

There  was  a  struggling  basso  by  the  name 
of  Brown,  who  was  desirous  of  effecting  an 
entrance  into  society  to  the  extent  of  being  en- 
gaged to  sing  at  swagger  and  noisy  receptions 
of  the  elite  —  the  kind  who  pronounce  it 
"elight"  -and  one  day  he  came  to  Zabritski, 
whom  he  had  known  for  years,  with  a  woful 
tale  about  his  fear  of  losing  an  engagement  to 


I've  Been  Thinking        165 

sing  at  the  house  of  a  rich  lard  lady  on  account 
of  his  accompanist  having  sprained  his  wrist, 
and  would  Zabritski  go  incog  and  play  for 
him? 

And  of  course  Zabritski  would,  just  as  will- 
ingly as  he  would  have  done  it  when  he  had 
some  hair  and  was  struggling  himself,  and  so 
little  basso  Brown  departed  in  fine  spirits. 

Now  it  happened  that  the  great  Zabritski 
arrived  first  at  the  home  of  the  rich  lard  lady 
—  who  was  a  newly  richer,  by  the  way  —  and 
he  gave  her  to  understand  that  he  was  only  a 
poor  worm  of  an  accompanist,  and  at  that  her 
manner,  which  had  been  non-committal,  changed 
to  frigidity  and  she  sent  him  haughtily  into  an 
ante-room  off  the  main  hall  to  await  the  arrival 
of  Brown.  Zabritski's  sense  of  humor  is  often 
his  salvation,  and  he  who  is  used  to  being  It 
in  the  center  of  a  drawing-room,  with  ladies 
falling  all  over  one  another  in  their  efforts  to 
shake  the  hand  that  was  taught  by  Liszt,  went 


1 66        I've  Been  Thinking 

meekly  into  the  anteroom  and  shivered  in  a 
draft  while  he  waited. 

After  a  time  the  newly  rich  lard  lady  left  her 
chattering  guests  and  came  in  and  spoke  to 
him;  in  fact  she  scolded  him  rather  hard  be- 
cause the  basso  was  late,  and  Zabritski,  with  a 
beautiful  assumption  of  servility,  said:  "I'm 
very  sorry,  madam,  but  this  is  the  time  for  us 
poor  artists  to  make  hay,  and  my  friend,  Mon- 
sieur Brown,  is  singing  at  a  reception  at  the 
Countess  Sagoni's.  He  sings  but  one  number 
and  will  be  here  soon.  I  hope  you  will  excuse 
me  for  taking  up  room  here  until  he  comes." 

Now  all  this  was  innocent  fiction,  for  the 
little  basso  was  not  singing  at  the  Countess 
Sagoni's,  although  he  would  have  loved  to. 
He  was  merely  behind  time. 

But  the  lard  lady  pricked  up  her  ears  at 
mention  of  the  Countess's  name,  as  she  belonged 
to  a  real  aristocracy,  centuries  old,  which 
ripened  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic,  and  the 


I've  Been  Thinking        167 

newly  richer  would  have  given  her  tiara  to  be 
one  of  the  favored  few  who  attended  her  really 
musical  musicales. 

Her  tone  toward  Zabritski  softened,  and  she 
told  him  that  he  could  come  in  and  sit  down 
behind  the  grand  piano  if  he  found  it  too  cold 
in  the  anteroom.  Zabritski  had  never  sat  be- 
hind a  grand  piano  in  his  life,  and  as  he  is 
fond  of  new  sensations  he  accepted  her  invita- 
tion and  hid  himself  from  the  chattering  throng, 
and  at  last  Brown  came  in  and  sang  to  Za- 
britski's  accompaniment,  and  several  times  his 
voice  could  be  heard  above  the  conversation, 
although  there  were  nearly  a  hundred  talking 
and  he  was  the  only  one  singing. 

After  the  music  was  all  finished  the  little 
basso  and  his  humble  friend,  Zabritski,  went 
away  without  a  word  from  the  lard  lady,  be- 
cause she  was  talking  a  blue  streak  to  an  aris- 
tocrat from  above  Fifty-ninth  Street,  who  was 
as  freshly  aristocratic  as  a  newly  minted  coin, 


1 68        I've  Been  Thinking 

and  for  the  same  reason  —  she  belonged  to  the 
coinage  of  1903. 

But  the  butler  gave  Brown  twenty-five  dollars 
in  three  bills  as  he  went  out,  and  so  he  was 
happy  —  for  he  needed  the  money. 

Time  works  miracles,  and  some  time  later 
the  lard  lady  gave  an  evening  concert,  and 
having  by  rare  good  luck  met  the  Countess 
Sagoni,  she  invited  her,  and  the  Countess 
Sagoni,  having  a  fondness  for  freaks,  accepted 
the  invitation.  One  must  relax  sometimes. 

The  rich  lard  lady  had  a  number  of  singers 
who  waited  in  the  anteroom,  but  her  piece 
de  resistance  was  no  less  a  lion  than  that  great 
Hungarian  pianist  (born  in  Irving  place),  Ignace 
Zabritski.  She  had  engaged  him  through  Herr 
Wolfram  Waldvogel,  and  I  happen  to  know 
that  he  was  to  receive  five  hundred  dollars  for 
playing  once. 

Now  if  she  had  had  a  memory  for  faces  she 
would  have  recognized  him  as  soon  as  he  came 


I've  Been  Thinking        169 

in  —  and  yet  I  don't  know.  You  see  Herr 
Waldvogel,  who  is  a  real  German  gentleman, 
blond,  six  feet  tall,  and  with  the  manners  of  an 
Austrian  noble,  came  with  Zabritski,  and  he 
presented  him  to  the  lard  lady  with  tremendous 
impressiveness,  and  Zabritski  put  on  his  most 
exclusive  air  and  seemed  about  to  die  of  ennui 
on  the  spot,  and  that  fetched  the  lard  lady  all 
right  (if  you  will  pardon  such  a  free  use  of 
English). 

But  the  thing  that  settled  it  was  when  the 
Countess  Sagoni  went  up  to  Zabritski,  whom 
she  knew  very  well,  and  chatted  most  bohe- 
mianly  with  him  in  very  choice  Italian.  After 
that  every  one  in  the  room  was  hauled  up  and 
presented  to  him,  and  then  he  sat  down  and 
played  a  pathetic  thing  by  Tschaikowsky, 
and  many  people  who  knew  it  was  pathetic 
were  moved  to  tears  —  right  in  the  midst  of 
their  conversation  —  and  after  it  was  all  over 
the  lard  lady  shook  hands  with  Zabritski  most 


170        I've  Been  Thinking 

effusively  and  asked  him  if  he  knew  any  other 
artists  of  "dear  old  Hungary"  who  could  do  a 
turn.  She  also  said  she  adored  "talent." 
And  Zabritski  remembered  his  sense  of  humor 
just  in  time  and  told  her  he  had  a  compatriot 
named  Braunski,  who  had  a  glorious  bass 
voice,  and  he  thought  he  could  get  him  to  sing 
for  two  hundred  dollars  as  a  great  favor,  al- 
though he  was  simply  visiting  this  country 
and  was  doing  nothing  of  a  professional 
kind. 

Of  course  you  know  that  when  the  little 
basso  came  to  the  house  he  had  his  label  on 
(the  wrong  label,  naturally,  as  Brown,  or 
Braunski,  the  basso,  was  born  near  Gowanus 
Canal,  over  in  Brooklyn). 

But  the  lard  lady  made  much  of  him,  you 
can  bet  your  sesterces,  and  the  Countess  Sagoni, 
who  knew  a  good  voice  when  she  heard  it,  no 
matter  where  a  man  had  happened  to  be  born, 
had  him  sing  at  one  of  her  Sundays,  and  that 


I've  Been  Thinking       171 

was  the   beginning  of  his  present  successful 
career. 
Oh,  these  labels! 


THE  first  pair  of  shoes.  A  very  impor- 
tant addition  to  the  wardrobe  of  life  in 
spite  of  their  insignificant  size.  The  shoes  that 
come  afterward  are  thrown  aside  or  given  away 
or  are  worn  all  to  pieces  and  are  less  provoca- 
tive of  sentiment  than  two  weather-beaten  shoes 
that  have  served  their  turn  to  boy  or  man. 
But  the  first  shoes  are  often  kept  by  the  mother 
of  the  little  one  who  put  them  on,  sometimes 
to  show  them  to  him  when  he  is  big  enough 
to  appreciate  that  at  one  time  his  feet  were  as 
diminutive;  sometimes  to  awaken  memories 
of  little  feet  that  finished  their  earthly  pil- 
grimage too  sorrowfully  soon. 

But  it  is  not  to  the  mother  alone  that  the 
first  pair  of  shoes  is  important.    At  the  time 


172        I've  Been  Thinking 

of  their  acquisition  they  are  omnipresent  to 
the  consciousness  of  their  baby  owner. 

The  first  pair  of  trousers  fill  not  so  wide  a 
place  in  the  mental  horizon.  By  the  time  one 
arrives  at  his  first  trousers  he  has  tasted  of  a 
good  many  felicities  and  can  compare  one 
thing  with  another.  He  may  have  known 
and  remembered  disappointments  and  life  is 
not  with  him  an  entirely  roseate  dream;  he  has 
had  fights  with  the  neighbor's  boy  and  per- 
haps did  not  always  come  off  victorious,  and 
while  the  trousers  are,  of  course,  fore  tastes 
of  heaven,  still  his  eyes  have  been  opened 
to  some  of  the  disillusionments  of  early  boy- 
hood. 

But  the  first  pair  of  shoes  —  perhaps  I  should 
say  the  first  consciousness  of  a  pair  of  shoes — 
comes  when  the  owner  is  not  yet  three  and 
brings  with  it  absolute  and  undiluted  felicity. 

From  time  to  time  mother  goes  away  from 
the  house  and  when  Toddlekins  asks  where 


I've  Been  Thinking        173 

she  is  the  reply  is,  "Mama  has  gone  to  town. 
She'll  come  back  soon." 

He  runs  to  the  window  and  climbs  up  on  a 
chair  and  looks  toward  the  point  where  the 
hill  drops  suddenly  and  there  is  nothing  to  be 
seen  but  clouds  and  blue  sky.  Toddlekins 
knows  that  somewhere  below  the  blue  sky 
mama  is  riding  after  old  Jack  to  "Tottiton." 
"Tottiton"  is  as  near  as  Toddlekins  can  come 
to  pronouncing  the  name  of  the  village  to  which 
mother  has  gone  to  do  her  Saturday  shopping, 
but  Tottiton  is  as  near  to  the  name  as  is  neces- 
sary. All  children  have  their  Tottitons,  places 
of  delight  from  which  mamas  come  back 
bearing  wonderful  packages  that  may  contain 
nothing  but  things  for  the  kitchen,  but  that 
once  in  a  while  hold  red  and  white  candies 
called  "pepnit." 

So  Toddlekins  looks  out  of  the  window  for 
mama  until  he  is  tired,  and  then  he  lies  down 
on  the  sitting-room  floor  and  goes  into  a  dream- 


174        I've  Been  Thinking 

less  sleep  from  which  the  rattle  of  wheels 
awakens  him,  and  he  runs  to  the  front  window 
and  there  is  mama  with  her  basket  full  of 
bundles. 

"What  for  Toddy,  mama?  What  for 
Toddy?" 

"Oh,  I've  brought  some  tea  and  some  oat- 
meal and  some  onions.  Want  them?" 

He  is  reaching  up  inquisitive  hands  to  poke 
a  hole  in  a  package  in  order  to  find  out  whether 
it  is  only  tea  and  oatmeal  or  whether  it  is  be- 
loved "pepnits." 

"Don't  touch,  Toddlekins.  Come  out  into 
the  kitchen  and  if  you're  a  good  boy  mama 
will  give  you  something  very  nice." 

"Pepnits,  mama?" 

"Better  than  pepnits,"  says  mama,  who 
has  two  older  children  and  who  knows  what  is 
better  than  pepnits. 

Out  into  the  kitchen  trots  Toddlekins, 
wondering  what  there  is  on  this  great  earth 


I've  Been  Thinking        175 

that  stretches  'way  down  to  Tottiton  better 
than  pepnits. 

The  prosaic  oatmeal  and  tea  and  onions  and 
many  other  packages  are  laid  upon  the  kitchen 
table,  and  but  one  package  remains  in  the  basket, 
and  it  does  not  look  to  Toddlekins  like  pepnits. 
The  color  of  the  paper  is  different. 

It  is  summer  time  and  Toddlekins  has  been 
going  barefoot  ever  since  he  can  remember  — 
ever  since  April  in  fact.  Before  that  he  wore 
little  home-made  shoes,  but  he  does  not  remem- 
ber those. 

All  too  slowly  mama  removes  the  string 
and  opens  the  paper,  and  there  are  two  shoes 
like  sister  Alice's  only  smaller. 

"Shoes  for  you,  Toddikins." 

Flop  on  the  floor  he  goes  as  if  he  had  slipped 
on  ice,  and  tries  to  put  the  shoes  on  backward, 
upside  down,  any  way  but  the  right  way. 

"Here,  dear,  mama  will  put  them  on." 

"Dey  has    buttons,  mama,"  says    Toddle- 


176        I've  Been  Thinking 

kins,  his  eyes  winking  with  excitement.  He 
struggles  to  get  up  and  walk  in  them  before 
the  shoes  are  fairly  on,  let  alone  being  buttoned. 

Stockings?  Not  to-day.  Mama  knows  his 
impatience.  This  is  just  for  delight,  and  if  he 
had  not  another  stitch  on  him  he  would  be 
fully  clothed  and  willing  to  go  anywhere  with 
anybody.  His  shoes  have  made  him  fearless 
and  reckless. 

"Sit  still,  Toddles.  I  can't  put  them  on  with 
you  wiggling." 

"Want  to  stand  up  and  show  Alice." 

Of  course  he  does.  If  the  world  were  to 
him  as  big  as  it  really  is  he  would  march  around 
its  entire  circumference  on  a  journey  just  to 
tell  every  one  in  it  the  all-important,  the  tre- 
mendous fact  that  he,  Toddlekins  Maffews, 
has  a  pair  of  new  shoes. 

At  last  he  is  up  and  the  shoes  are  accom- 
plished facts.  Two  shiny  black  encasements 
that  are  far  brighter  than  the  sun  or  anything 


I've  Been  Thinking        177 

he  has  ever  seen.  Why,  he  can  see  nothing 
else.  He  is  all  new  shoes. 

Alice  comes  into  the  kitchen. 

"I  dot  new  shoes,  Alice,"  says  Toddlekins. 

11  Oh,  doesn't  he  look  cunning,  mama.  You 
dear  baby." 

"I'm  not  a  baby.  I'm  big  boy,  mos'  as  big 
as  Arfur." 

A  noise  is  heard  outside  and  Arthur  comes 
in.  Perhaps  Toddlekins  exaggerated  a  little, 
for  Arthur  is  ten  and  well  grown  for  his  age, 
and  Toddlekins  is  not  yet  three. 

"See  my  new  shoes,  Arfur." 

"Kid,"  says  Arthur,  contemptuously,  mean- 
ing no  pun. 

"Don't  laugh  at  him,  Arthur,"  says  his 
mother.  "He's  a  very  big  boy  and  he  has  a 
beautiful  pair  of  shoes." 

Indeed  they  are  beautiful.  Pepnits  are  totally 
forgotten  in  the  joy  of  this  gift.  He  marches 
around  the  kitchen  in  them  and  then  he  jumps 


178        I've  Been  Thinking 

around  it  in  them  and  then  he  hops  around. 
They  make  a  very  grown-up  sound.  The 
affectionate  little  fellow  suddenly  realizes  that 
"muvver"  brought  them,  and  he  runs  to  em- 
brace her,  trips  over  the  shoes,  and  falls  on  his 
face. 

His  lips  begin  to  pucker.  One  word  of 
sympathy  from  mama  or  Alice  and  the  flood 
gates  would  open.  But  the  word  does  not 
come.  Mama  knows  better.  He  is  now  a 
"big  boy"  and  she  says,  "Big  boys  with  new 
shoes  don't  cry,  do  they?" 

He  jumps  up  and  in  prodigious  tones  he  says, 
"No,  big  boys  don't  cry.  I  show  grammer 
my  shoes."  And  then  he  climbs  up-stairs,  pat- 
ting each  step  with  what  is  to  him  a  rafter-shak- 
ing tread  and  quite  sure  that  he  will  frighten 
grandma  half  to  death.  He  calls  to  her  be- 
fore he  reaches  her  door: 

"Grammer,  it's  Tot'kins." 

"My    mercy    me!"     says    grandma    from 


I've  Been  Thinking        179 

within  her  pleasant  room.  "I  thought  it  was 
bears  and  robbers." 

How  proud  he  feels.  For  of  course  he  be- 
lieves her.  Those  new  shoes  coming  up  the 
stairs  did  sound  kind  of  like  bears  and  robbers. 
He  bursts  into  a  merry  laugh. 

"New  shoes,  grammer.    I'm  big  boy  now." 

"Well,  I  never  did  in  all  my  born  days,"  says 
grandma,  looking  over  her  spectacles  at  them. 

"Are  those  real  buttons  on  them,  Totsy?" 

"Umh,  umh.  Muwer  brought  'em  from 
Tottiton.  An'  I'm  to  have  stockings." 

"Well,  I  should  hope  so.  Shoes  without 
stockings  would  be  only  half  dressed.  Still  the 
shoes  are  the  main  thing,  aren't  they?" 

"Mmm." 

"Where  you  going,  Totsy."  For  he  has 
turned  and  is  marching  out  with  what  is  pretty 
near  to  a  military  stride,  his  eyes  on  the  shiny 
black  shoes  that  make  walking  so  easy.  It 
wouldn't  be  very  hard  to  fly  with  such  shoes  on. 


180        I've  Been  Thinking 

"Totsy,  where  are  you  going?" 
"Show  my  shoes  to  ve  minister." 
Mr.  Hardin  is  the  nearest  neighbor  of  the 
Matthews  and  he  lives  about  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  away. 

"Oh,  I  wouldn't  go  out  doors  with  my  new 
shoes.  Keep  them  fresh  for  Sunday." 

Toddlekins  says  nothing.  Young  as  he  is 
he  has  learned  that  when  one  says  nothing  but 
goes  and  does  something,  at  any  rate  it  is  done 
even  though  there  be  consequences.  Now  Rev. 
Mr.  Hardin  is  one  of  the  nicest  men  in  the 
world,  and  it  is  no  more  than  right  that  Toddle- 
kins  should  let  him  know  what  honors  have 
been  showered  upon  his  feet.  Of  course  he 
must  go  and  show  the  new  shoes  to  the  nice 
man.  "  Muwer "  would  want  him  to  go. 
But  it  won't  be  necessary  to  bother  her  by 
asking.  He'll  tell  hjsr  when  he  comes  back. 

Hello,  there  are  drawbacks  to  everything. 
One  can  steal  out  of  the  house  in  one's  bare 


I've  Been  Thinking        181 

feet  and  go  on  forbidden  walks  without  attract- 
ing any  attention,  but  these  beautiful,  shiny, 
black  new  shoes  are  saying  with  every  step, 
"We're  running  away." 

He  tries  tiptoes,  but  at  the  most  critical 
juncture  he  stumbles  over  himself  as  he  did  in 
the  kitchen,  and  falls.  But  he  does  not  cry 
and  he  is  up  in  an  instant  and  goes  down 
the  front  stairs  because  there  is  a  carpet  there. 
Really,  new  shoes  have  a  powerfully  stimu- 
lating effect  on  the  brain.  Toddlekins  is  doing 
a  vast  amount  of  thinking  for  a  three-year- 
old.  I  tell  you  that  when  one  has  his  first 
shoes  on  his  feet  it  gives  him  a  new  under- 
standing. 

He  finally  escapes  without  being  observed 
and  trudges  away  through  the  dusty  road  to 
the  minister's  house.  The  black  shoes  are 
not  as  black  now  and  he  stops  to  wipe  them  off 
on  his  little  white  sleeve.  Ah,  that  is  better — 
for  the  shoes. 


1 82         I've  Been  Thinking 

Forward  again  with  his  eyes  on  the  magnetic 
shoes,  and  if  Joel  Holton  were  not  a  careful 
driver  he  would  have  been  run  over,  for  the  baby 
never  saw  the  horse  approaching  for  absorp- 
tion in  his  shoes. 

He  hears  the  hail  of  welcome  from  good- 
natured  and  fat  Joel  and  he  says,  "I  got  new 
shoes,"  and  in  his  efforts  to  show  both  at  once 
he  sits  down  hard.  But  a  hard  sit-down  is  a 
very  ordinary  way  of  reaching  earth  to  a  three- 
year-old.  He  is  up  and  on  and  arrives  at  the 
parsonage  just  exactly  in  time  to  set  flight  to  a 
very  valuable  train  of  thought  in  the  mind  of 
the  good  minister  who  is  hard  at  work  at  his 
sermon. 

"  Mr.  Hardin !  Mr.  Hardin ! "  shouts  Toddle- 
kins  outside  his  study  door. 

"Hello,  what  you  want?"  says  the  minister, 
with  just  a  shade  of  irritation  in  his  voice. 
His  own  children  are  never  allowed  to  disturb 
him. 


I've  Been  Thinking        183 

"I  have  new  shoes,"  said  Toddlekins,  still 
outside  the  door. 

The  boy  tries  in  vain  to  turn  the  knob  and 
the  minister  opens  the  door  for  him,  his  brow 
wrinkled  at  the  interruption.  But  when  he 
sees  Toddlekins  and  the  new  shoes  his  mind  is 
carried  to  a  far  distant  day  when  there  was 
another  baby  who  stood  before  him  and  who 
showed  him  shoes,  and  his  eyes  dim  and  his 
tones  grow  soft  as  he  stoops  down  and  pats  the 
little  tow  head  and  says: 

"You  don't  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  have 
new  shoes?" 

The  boy  nods  his  head  eloquently,  his  breast 
heaving  with  excitement.  He  has  astonished 
the  minister. 

"Well,  seems  to  me  those  are  very  fine  shoes. 
And  how  black  they  are." 

The  boy  stoops  down  and  polishes  them  again 
with  his  sleeve.  His  sleeves  are  no  longer  white. 

"I  came  froo  de  road,"  he  explains. 


184        I've  Been  Thinking 

"And  all  alone.  What  a  big  boy!  Well, 
you  go  out  and  ask  Martha  for  a  doughnut  and 
then  go  back  to  mother.  And  be  sure  to  come 
to-morrow  to  church  with  those  nice  black 
shoes  and  listen  to  my  church  talk  that  I  am 
writing  now.  Do  you  remember  when  you 
said  you  wondered  why  they  let  me  talk  in 
church  when  they  wouldn't  let  you?" 

"That  was  when  I  was  a  little  boy." 

"Exactly,  nearly  a  month  ago,  before  you 
had  new  shoes.  Well,  they  certainly  are  fine. 
You  be  sure  to  show  them  to  Martha  and  be 
sure  to  get  the  doughnut." 

Be  sure  to  show  the  shoes  to  Martha,  indeed. 
Toddlekins  might  forget  the  doughnut,  but 
nothing  could  put  the  shoes  out  of  his  thoughts. 
It  will  be  a  very  sleepy  and  tired  boy  who  goes 
to  bed  that  night  (with  his  shoes  still  on  —  by 
special  permission)  and  those  same  little  black 
shoes  with  the  shiny  buttons  will  have  carried 
him  over  many  a  mile  indoors  and  out,  but 


I've  Been  Thinking        185 

though  he  live  to  be  a  hundred  he  will  never 
again  come  on  a  day  so  full  of  triumphs  and 
happinesses. 


THE  Reader  of  Novels  was  wont  to  judge 
of  a  man's  character  by  a  few  sharply 
defined  actions  set  forth  by  the  novelist,  and 
the  woman  who  scolded  her  children  in  the 
first,  fifth,  and  seventh  chapters  was,  of  course, 
a  vixen.  So  also  the  man  who  spoke  ungram- 
matically each  time  he  made  his  appearance  in 
the  book  was  a  man  of  low  social  position,  and 
the  fellow  who  refused  to  make  Christmas 
presents  was  an  incurably  mean  man. 

Having  become  used  to  these  snap  judgments 
of  his  fellows  by  a  constant  reading  of  novels, 
the  Reader  flattered  himself  that  he  could 
judge  of  a  man's  character  by  the  first  thing  he 
said  or  by  the  first  thing  that  was  said  of  him 
by  his  neighbor. 


1 86        I've  Been  Thinking 

And  it  so  happened  that  the  Reader  of  Novels 
found  himself  in  a  strange  place  that  did  not 
seem  to  be  on  this  earth  at  all,  and  a  man  with  a 
noble  brow  and  a  weak  chin  and  a  strong 
mouth  and  near-set  and  lustrous  eyes  and  a 
large  nose  and  generous  ears  and  large  feet  and 
small  hands  and  a  bull  neck  stood  near  by, 
and  one  who  looked  like  a  judge  was  talking 
about  him  and  naming  his  characteristics. 

"He  was  often  cross  to  his  wife,"  said  the 
judge. 

"Ah,  a  male  scold,"  said  the  Reader  of 
Novels,  readily. 

"He  was  very  fond  of  children." 

"What's  that?"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels, 
scenting  something  incongruous. 

"One  time  his  heart  was  set  to  murder  his 
brother  and  only  his  brother's  flight  prevented 
his  death." 

"A  thug,"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels,  always 
to  himself. 


I've  Been  Thinking        187 

"He  denied  himself  all  that  makes  life  worth 
living  in  order  to  make  the  last  days  of  his 
mother  comfortable,  and  moved  by  a  good 
impulse  he  divided  the  estate  with  his  brother 
although  it  had  all  been  left  to  him." 

"The  same  man  ? "  said  the  Reader  of  Novels, 
dumbfounded. 

"He  did  a  despicably  mean  act  in  business 
and  was  never  sorry  for  it." 

"Ah,  I  thought  so,"  said  the  Reader  of 
Novels.  "His  true  character  is  coming  out." 

"He  told  a  vulgar  story  to  a  friend  and 
both  laughed  at  the  undoubted  humor  of 
it." 

"Ah,  ha!"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels.  "He 
is  being  drawn  a  little  truer  to  life." 

"He  was  deeply  moved  by  a  spiritual  poem 
and  appreciated  it  so  sincerely  that  he  wrote  it 
out  and  carried  it  with  him,  and  finally  learned 
it  by  heart  and  tried  to  govern  his  life  accord- 
ing to  its  precepts." 


1 88        I've  Been  Thinking 

"The  deuce  he  did!"  said  the  Reader  of 
Novels,  incredulously. 

"He  told  another  vulgar  story." 

"He'd  better  have  given  up  shamming," 
said  the  Reader  of  Novels. 

"He  drank  more  than  was  good  for  him 
and  was  seen  in  a  condition  of  inebriety  by 
young  people  who  had  respected  him  as  a 
governor  of  the  church." 

"Of  course,"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels. 
"He  is  getting  truer  and  truer  to  his  charac- 
ter." 

"He  established  a  club  to  which  young  men 
were  welcome  and  at  which  no  intoxicating 
liquors  were  sold,  and  said  in  all  sincerity  that 
he  believed  immoderate  drinking  to  be  a 
curse." 

"The  hypocrite,"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels. 

"He  voted  the  Republican  ticket." 

"Good,"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels,  who 
was  a  Vermonter. 


I've  Been  Thinking        189 

"He  voted  the  Democratic  ticket." 

"Turncoat,"  said  the  Reader  of  Novels. 

"He  gave  generously  of  his  means  to  help 
a  poor  man  who  had  been  buffeted  by  the  world, 
and  spoke  well  of  him  when  to  do  so  exposed 
him  to  contumely." 

"Who  was  this,  anyhow?"  said  the  Reader 
of  Novels,  more  and  more  puzzled. 

"He  said  malignant  things  behind  a  man's 
back,  things  that  worked  the  man's  downfall, 
although  he  never  knew  that." 

"Pity  he  didn't.  He  would  have  exulted," 
said  the  Reader  of  Novels. 

"He  reproached  a  man  in  all  sincerity  for 
saying  like  things  of  another  behind  his  back, 
and  had  a  poor  opinion  of  that  backbiter  from 
that  time  on." 

"This  is  beyond  me,"  said  the  Reader  of 
Novels. 

"He  refused  night  after  night  to  give  up  his 
seat  in  the  cars  to  poor  tired  women,  and  at 


190        I've  Been  Thinking 

last  gave  his  life  to  save  a  poor  wretched  Mag- 
dalen from  death  by  fire." 

At  this  point  the  Reader  of  Novels  addressed 
the  judge,  and  said. 
"What  was  this  person,  anyway?" 
"He  was  a  human  being,"  said  the  judge, 
gravely.    "There  are  many  such." 


"  QEVEN  Miles  to  Smith's  Shoe  Store."  So 
O  reads  the  half  obliterated  legend  upon 
the  mile-post  opposite  my  door  in  the  country. 
It  is  ten  years  since  in  proud  fresh  paint  it 
first  invited  my  gaze,  and  what  a  comforter 
and  guide  and  warning  it  has  been  in  that 
time!  Smith's  shoe  store  is  in  a  provincial 
town.  Smith's  shoe  store  is  presumably  dark 
and  dismal  and  smells  of  leather  and  new 
rubber  overshoes  and  patent  insoles,  and  it 
probably  backs  upon  a  dirty,  turgid  stream 
that  supplies  some  half  dozen  mills  that 


I've  Been  Thinking        191 

might  better  go  thirsty  than  taste  of  its  oily 
waters. 

Often  when  things  have  gone  wrong  with  me, 
the  clouds  seeming  to  have  neither  end  nor  be- 
ginning, I  have  looked  out  at  the  little  sign  and 
have  realized  that  whatever  else  might  happen 
I  was  still  seven  miles  away  from  Smith's  shoe 
store. 

The  mile-post  stands  amid  a  clump  of  brakes; 
black  alders  shield  it  from  the  morning  sun, 
and  a  sweetbrier  bush  has  scratched  at  its 
paint  for  seven  summers;  in  the  distance  one 
sees  purple  mountains  and  near  at  hand  are 
fragrant  meadows  and  inviting  woods  and  an 
irresolute  brook  and  half  ruined  stone  walls 
on  whose  mossy  rocks  the  robins  sing  in  the 
morning,  and  I  have  seen  many  a  humorous 
bobolink  pause  and  seem  to  read  the  sign  and 
then  fly  away  from  Smith's  shoe  store,  singing 
mockingly. 

Smith's  shoe  store  will  always  be  a  sealed 


192        I've  Been  Thinking 

book  to  me,  thanks  to  the  sign.  I  have  re- 
ceived a  friendly  warning  and  I  know  where 
not  to  go.  My  feet  may  need  shoes  from  time 
to  time,  but  they  will  never  come  from  Smith's 
emporium.  I  want  to  feel  that  the  worst  has 
not  happened  for  me;  that  Smith's  is  still  a 
terra  incognita. 

Once  I  went  driving  aimlessly  and  turning 
a  corner  I  came  on  a  sister  mile-post  that  read 
"One  Mile  to  Smith's  Shoe  Store."  The  road 
was  narrow  and  it  was  risky  turning,  but  almost 
in  a  panic  I  pointed  my  horse's  nose  in  the  way 
it  should  go  and  drove  back  at  a  rattling  pace 
—  any  pace  is  a  rattling  one  with  me  for  I  need 
a  new  wagon.  How  cheering  it  was  when  I 
had  ridden  some  thirty  minutes  to  come  to 
another  mile-post  that  read  "Two  Miles  to 
Smith's  Shoe  Store"!  And  as  I  passed  each 
one  in  turn  I  felt  like  breaking  out  into  a  song 
of  thanksgiving,  for  the  road  led  me  higher  and 
higher  and  new  glories  of  scenery  were  dis- 


I've  Been  Thinking       193 

covered  as  Smith's  fell  back  farther  and  farther, 
and  at  last  I  came  to  my  silent  comforter  and 
was  assured  in  characters  still  legible  that  it 
was  "Seven  Miles  to  Smith's."  Never  again 
did  I  take  that  particular  drive. 

There  are  Smith's  shoe  stores  scattered 
throughout  our  lives.  Happy  we,  if  it  is  pos- 
sible to  keep  the  seven-mile  guide-post  in  front 
of  our  eyes  and  feel  that  whatever  other  evils 
may  befall,  two  good  leagues  of  road  lie  be- 
tween us  and  Smith's. 


PROFESSOR  ERASMUS  SVELTHETT 
of  St.  Jacob's  University  has  written  a 
very  learned  brochure  in  which  he  sets  forth  an 
interesting  theory;  namely,  that  the  reason  that 
children  of  to-day  are  so  much  more  quiet  at 
the  breakfast-table  than  boys  and  girls  used 
to  be  is  because  they  have  plenty  to  read,  while 
the  children  of  bygone  generations,  with  nothing 


194        I've  Been  Thinking 

to  do  save  eat,  had  perforce  to  join  in  the  con- 
versation or  become  ennuyes. 

There  is  certainly  much  to  be  said  in  favor 
of  this  theory.  Children  of  the  present  time 
never  obtain  the  balance  of  conversation,  nor  do 
they  ever  have  to  be  reprimanded  for  interrupt- 
ing or  for  saying  untoward  things  at  the  wrong 
moment  —  although  it  is  a  question  whether 
the  right  moment  for  untoward  things  ever 
comes. 

But  even  if  this  fascinating  breakfast-litera- 
ture did  not  keep  the  children  quiet  there  would 
be  no  question  of  its  stimulative  action  upon 
their  minds. 

We  who  look  back  over  the  lapse  of  years  to 
our  own  childhood  recall  that  there  were  no 
Maltuminparvo  breakfast-foods  with  copious 
directions  for  use,  and  chatty  paragraphs  printed 
in  various-sized  type  on  the  yellow  box.  To 
be  sure,  those  of  us  who  lived  too  far  away 
from  great  centers  to  be  able  to  buy  our  con- 


I've  Been  Thinking        195 

densed  milk  fresh  every  day  from  the  itin- 
erant white  wagon  were  accustomed  to  the 
circular  cans  with  their  Gail-burdened  litera- 
ture in  various  languages,  but  in  those  days 
Gail  Hamilton  reigned  supreme  even  in  the 
nursery,  and  her  epigrammatic  writings  spoiled 
us  for  the  more  labored  effusions  of  the  other 
Gail.  Then,  too,  the  cans  being  circular, 
mother  had  to  keep  turning  them  around  if 
little  Willy  wanted  to  read,  and  this  was  almost 
as  bad  as  being  interrupted. 

But  now  all  is  changed.  If  papa  is  taciturn ; 
if  mama  has  a  headache  and  does  not  care  to 
talk,  little  William,  who  has  long  since  learned 
how  to  read,  sits  at  the  matutinal  repast  and 
quietly  imbibes  useful  information  of  many 
kinds.  All  silently  the  knowledge  is  borne  in 
on  him  that  "  Energy scose  is  the  fuel-food  of 
life.  Better  a  pewter  plate  and  Energyscose 
than  a  golden  platter  and  nought  but  a  stalled 
ox  thereon." 


196        I've  Been  Thinking 

If  he  tire  of  reading  about  the  virtues  of 
Energyscose  he  may  turn  his  eyes  to  the  corn- 
tassel  colored  box  on  the  right  and  learn  that 
"  Gripe-knots  are  unlike  any  other  food  prepa- 
ration. Being  entirely  digested  they  naturally 
wean  a  strong  man  from  coffee,  and  can  be 
eaten  without  practise  by  teething  babies. 
They  contain  nothing  that  will  give  the  stomach 
the  slightest  trouble,  and  persons  who  have  used 
our  food  for  years  do  not  need  their  stomachs 
at  all.  They  are  made  of  devitalized  chestnut 
sawdust,  and  it  is  possible  to  eat  them  without 
the  use  of  sugar  or  cream"  —  or  anesthetics. 
"Properly  compressed  they  can  be  used  by  the 
children  as  building-blocks,  and  can  then  be 
reduced  to  a  powder  and  taken  once  every 
two  hours,  when  they  give  one  all  the  effect  of 
having  eaten  without  its  foolish  pleasures." 

When  William  has  read,  and  one  side  is 
thoroughly  digested  —  for  the  literature  is  not 
predigested,  like  the  contents  of  the  box  — 


I've  Been  Thinking        197 

mama  will  turn  it  around,  and  he  may  read  in- 
spiriting letters  from  invalids  who  lost  their 
sense  of  taste  years  ago  and  who  have  enjoyed 
Gripe-knots  ever  since;  or  else  on  the  third 
side  he  may  learn  how  to  make  simple,  innocu- 
ous desserts  of  bran. 

Really  literary  families  seldom  content  them- 
selves with  one  lettered  box  of  patent  food,  and 
some  cultivated  Bostonians  have  as  many  as 
five  or  six  brands,  of  various  shades  of  yellow 
and  brown,  merely  that  Alcibiades  Beacon, 
tired  of  reading  about  Cornena  and  its  stimu- 
lative properties,  may  turn  to  the  box  of  Wheat- 
oast  or  Puttyjim's  Oathusk,  or  the  box  of 
Noegud  with  its  entertaining  anecdote  to  the 
effect  that  "a  lady  in  Seattle,  who  had  not  been 
able  to  take  a  step  for  fourteen  years,  ate  a 
single  box  of  Noegud  and  immediately  took 
steps  to  keep  it  constantly  in  the  larder"  —  and 
away  from  the  breakfast-table.  Or  his  little 
mind,  unable  to  cope  with  his  father's  argu- 


198        I've  Been  Thinking 

ments  to  prove  Aguinaldo  a  bigger  man  than 
Washington,  turns  with  relief  to  the  statement 
that  "Mrs.  Bentley,  of  Shogticocoa,  Minnesota, 
was  unable  to  take  anything  solid  without 
facial  paralysis.  She  ate  one  box  of  Noegud 
and  now  says  that  she  would  rather  eat  solid 
rock  than  be  without  it."  Mark  the  subtle 
sarcasm  of  her  remark.  It  is  dollars  to  dough- 
nuts that  Alcibiades,  Bostonian  though  he  be, 
does  not  see  that  if  she  would  not  be  without 
it  she  would  not  have  it  within  her. 

Some  may  carp  at  the  colors  of  the  packages; 
some  may  even  wish  that  the  food  could  be  put 
in  china  receptacles  and  the  literature  set  be- 
side each  plate  in  "individual"  pamphlets,  but 
no  one  can  say  that  there  are  not  many  aids  to 
conversation  among  the  elders  and  much  of  an 
improving  nature  to  children  in  the  unob- 
trusive and  absolutely  veracious  writings  of  the 
food-companies. 


I've  Been  Thinking        199 

ARE  you  in  the  habit  of  sending  your 
husband  to  dry-goods  stores  to  match 
things  ? 

If  you  live  in  the  country  or  the  suburbs  and 
your  husband's  office  is  in  the  city  there  is 
some  excuse  for  it,  but  if  you  live  in  the  city 
and  make  the  poor  man  do  such  work  as  that 
you  ought  to  have  married  some  one  else. 

His  brain  is  not  your  brain.  To  him  shades 
and  textures  and  shapes  are  as  nothing. 

Either  he  will  be  conscientious  and  get  the 
girl  at  the  counter  to  try  to  make  the  exact 
match,  and  failing  in  that  will  come  home  with- 
out the  spools  upon  which  you  are  depending 
for  your  morning's  work,  or  else  being  careless 
he  will  get  something  that  could  not  by  any 
possibility  be  made  to  do. 

In  either  case  you  will  judge  him  from  a 
woman's  view  point  and  he  will  make  but  a 
sorry  showing. 


200        I've  Been  Thinking 

The  best  way  is  to  write  down  plainly  just 
what  you  want  him  to  get  and  reduce  him  to 
mere  ignorant  errand-boy  status. 

Then  he,  a  man  who  perhaps  dominates 
political  assemblies  or  sits  high  in  church 
councils  or  delivers  valuable  legal  opinions, 
shuffles  into  the  store,  meek-eyed  and  diffident, 
and  going  up  to  the  spool  counter  (after  wander- 
ing all  over  the  store  looking  for  it)  says,  "  Give 
me  some  of  that,"  and  pointing  at  the  paper 
shoves  it  at  the  young  saleswoman.  And  she 
looks  at  him  with  pitying  eyes  as  a  poor  fool 
and,  reading  the  directions,  hands  out  the 
goods. 

He  goes  home  with  them  and  ten  to  one  they 
are  wrong,  but  he  is  safe. 

His  wife  can  say  nothing  because  he  was 
merely  the  shover  of  a  message,  not  a  thinking 
being  with  two  halves  to  his  brain. 

But  the  best  way  to  do  is  to  go  yourself  and 
thus  save  your  husband  from  encounters  that 


I've  Been  Thinking        201 

cannot  fail  to  reduce  his  exalted  opinion  of 
himself. 


SOME  wedded  couples  never  quarrel  at  all  I 
I  have  heard  people  who  had  lived  together 
for  eighty  or  ninety  or  a  hundred  years  say:  — 

"We  have  never  let  a  hard  word  pass  between 
us,"  and  I  have  thought  it  must  have  seemed 
like  a  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

Some  couples  never  quarrel  in  public  and 
they  are  supposed  to  get  along  beautifully  and 
are  noted  among  their  neighbors  as  being  de- 
voted. I  haven't  a  doubt  that  they  are  devoted. 
But  if  they  are  devoted  I  haven't  a  doubt  but 
that  they  have  their  healthy  little  tiffs  every 
now  and  then. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  in  a  suburban  com- 
munity where  gossip  is  kindly  and  there  is 
"nothing  doing,"  it  would  be  a  good  thing  if 
married  couples  would  quarrel  in  public  every 


202        I've  Been  Thinking 

now  and  then.  That  is  supposing  they  quarrel 
picturesquely.  I  know  people  so  dull  that  even 
a  quarrel  in  their  hands  would  not  attract  the 
attention  of  a  bystander. 

But  if  a  fairly  young  husband  and  wife  have 
the  gift  of  stinging  repartee  and  they  feel  that 
they  have  been  on  good  terms  too  long  it  would 
be  a  boon  to  their  neighbors  if  they  would  call 
them  up  by  telephone  and  say,  "Come  around 
at  once.  Jenny  and  I  are  boiling  over." 

Depend  upon  it,  all  who  called  themselves 
friends  would  come  instanter  and  would  take  up 
comfortable  situations  where  they  could  hear 
the  verbal  set-to  without  difficulty. 

Then  let  Jenny  say  something  she  will  regret 
and  let  Jack  follow  it  up  with  a  caustic  retort 
and  the  fun  would  have  begun. 

In  such  a  case  as  this,  if  Jack  is  afraid  of 
going  too  far  he  can  have  a  trusted  friend  call 
time  on  him,  or  if  he  fears  that  the  vituperative 
powers  of  Jenny  are  likely  to  lead  her  far  afield 


I've  Been  Thinking        203 

he  can  have  the  same  friend  call  time  on  her; 
but  do  let  the  battle  go  on  until  every  one  feels 
mentally  stimulated. 

And  when  the  last  guest  has  gone  Jenny  can 
fall  weeping  on  Jack's  neck  and  say  she  never 
meant  a  word  of  it. 

The  only  trouble  is  that  she  did  mean  it. 

That's  what  cuts. 


THE  other  day  you  said  you  wished  little 
Ethel  was  grown  up ;  that  you  were  tired 
of  the  anxieties  that  come  to  the  mother  of  a 
three-year-old. 

My  goodness,  woman,  you  know  not  what 
you  wish. 

There  was  a  mother  had  a  little  boy  of  three, 
a  tiny,  prattling,  affectionate,  tiring  child,  and 
many  times  she  said,  "Oh,  if  he  could  only 
grow  up  in  a  minute.  There  is  so  much  to  do 
for  him  and  I  may  not  do  it  right,  and  there  is 


204        I've  Been  Thinking 

no  telling  what  sickness  may  come  to  him.  I 
wish  he  was  eighteen." 

As  she  spoke  she  heard  the  flutter  of  wings 
and  a  presence  seemed  to  leave  the  room,  and 
the  boy  who  had  been  playing  out  of  doors, 
trying  to  guide  a  big  hoe  with  his  baby  hands, 
came  running  into  the  house.  And  his  step 
was  heavy. 

She  looked  up  and  saw  an  awkward,  homely, 
cocksure  boy  in  place  of  the  rosy,  loquacious, 
loving  child. 

"Who  are  you?"  said  she,  seeing  in  him  a 
likeness  to  his  father,  yet  not  knowing  her  own 
son. 

"  I  am  your  boy.  I  have  skipped  all  the  years 
of  childhood.  I  have  left  unsaid  the  wise  little 
sayings  that  would  have  comforted  you.  I 
have  left  undone  the  things  that  you  would 
have  held  in  remembrance.  I  have  given  up 
my  early,  trusting  love  for  you,  for  now  I  am 
almost  a  man  and  I  do  not  need  love." 


I've  Been  Thinking        205 

And  the  mother  cried  out  in  horror  for  she 
did  not  wish  to  believe  that  this  hobbledehoy 
was  her  little  boy. 

And,  sobbing,  she  leaned  her  head  on  the 
table,  and  in  a  few  moments  she  woke  up  and 
saw  her  little  boy  coming  in  at  the  door  lugging 
the  muddy  hoe  behind  him. 

And  she  hugged  him  to  her,  hoe  and  all,  and 
said,  "Live  your  life  with  me  and  grow  from 
babyhood  to  boyhood,  for  I  want  to  live  it  all 
with  you." 


OF  course  an  afternoon  tea  is  not  to  be 
taken   seriously,   and   I   hold   that  any 
kind   of   conversation   goes,  as   long  as   it  is 
properly  vacuous  and  irrelevant. 

One  meets  many  kinds  at  afternoon  teas  — 
the  bored,  the  bashful,  the  intense,  and  once 
in  a  while  the  interesting,  but  for  pure  delight 
there  is  nothing  quite  equals  the  gusher.  She 


206        I've  Been  Thinking 

is  generally  very  pretty.    Nature  insists  upon 
compensations. 

When  you  meet  a  real  gusher  —  one  born 
to  gush  —  you  can  just  throw  all  bounds  of 
probability  aside  and  say  the  first  thing  that 
comes  into  your  head,  sure  that  it  will  meet 
with  an  appreciative  burst  of  enthusiasm,  for 
your  true  gusher  is  nothing  if  she  is  not  enthu- 
siastic. There  are  those  who  listen  to  every- 
thing you  say  and  punctuate  it  with  "Yes-s-s, 
yes-s-s,  yes-s-s,"  until  the  sibilance  gets  on 
your  nerves;  but  the  attention  of  the  Simon- 
pure  gusher  is  purely  subconscious.  She  could 
not  repeat  a  thing  of  what  you  have  told  her  a 
half  minute  after  hearing  it.  Her  real  attention 
is  on  something  else  all  the  while  —  perhaps 
on  the  gowns  of  her  neighbors,  perhaps  on  the 
reflection  of  her  pretty  face  —  but  never  on  the 
conversation.  And  why  should  it  be?  Is  a 
tea  a  place  for  the  exercise  of  concentration? 
Perish  the  thought. 


I've  Been  Thinking        207 

You  are  presented  to  her  as  "Mr.  Mmmm," 
and  she  is  "delighted,"  and  smiles  so  ravish- 
ingly  that  you  wish  you  were  twenty  years 
younger.  You  do  not  yet  know  that  she  is  a 
gusher.  But  her  first  remark  labels  her.  Just 
to  test  her,  for  there  is  something  in  the  ani- 
mation of  her  face  and  the  farawayness  of  the 
eye  that  makes  you  suspect  her  sincerity,  you 
say:  — 

"I  happen  to  have  six  children — " 

"Oh,  how  perfectly  dee-ar!  How  old  are 
they?" 

She  scans  the  gown  of  a  woman  who  has 
just  entered  the  room  and,  being  quite  sure 
that  she  is  engaged  in  a  mental  valuation  of  it, 
you  say: — 

"They're  all  of  them  six." 

"Oh,  how  lovely!"  Her  unseeing  eyes  look 
you  in  the  face.  "  Just  the  right  age  to  be  com- 
panions." 

"Yes,  all  but  one." 


2o8        I've  Been  Thinking 

The  eye  has  wandered  to  another  gown,  but 
the  sympathetic  voice  says:  — 

"Oh,  what  api-i-ty!" 

"Yes,  isn't  it?    But  he's  quite  healthy." 

It's  a  game  now  —  fair  game  —  and  you're 
glad  you  came  to  the  tea! 

"Healthy,  you  say?  How  nice.  It's  per- 
fectly lovely  to  be  healthy.  Do  you  live  in 
the  country?" 

"Not  exactly  the  country.  We  live  in  Madi- 
son Square,  under  the  trees." 

"Oh,  how  perfectly  idyllic!" 

"Yes;  we  have  all  the  advantages  of  the 
city  and  the  delights  of  the  country.  I  got  a 
permit  from  the  Board  of  Education  to  put 
up  a  little  bungalow  alongside  the  Worth  monu- 
ment, and  the  children  bathe  in  the  fountain 
every  morning  when  the  weather  is  cold 
enough." 

"Oh,  how  charming!  How  many  children 
have  you?" 


I've  Been  Thinking        209 

"Only  seven.  The  oldest  is  five  and  the 
youngest  is  six." 

"Just  the  interesting  age.  Don't  you  think 
children  fascinating?" 

Again  the  roaming  eye  and  the  vivacious 
smile. 

"Yes,  indeed.  My  oldest  —  he's  fourteen 
and  quite  original.  He  says  that  when  he 
grows  up  he  doesn't  know  what  he'll  be." 

"Really?    How  cute!" 

"Yes,  he  says  it  every  morning,  a  half  hour 
before  breakfast." 

"Fancy!    How  old  did  you  say  he  was?" 

"Just  seventeen,  but  perfectly  girlike  and 
masculine." 

She  nods  her  head,  bows  to  an  acquaintance 
in  a  distant  part  of  the  room,  and  murmurs  in 
musical,  sympathetic  tones:  — 

"That's  an  adorable  age." 

"What,  thirteen?" 

"Yes.    Did  you  say  it  was  a  girl?" 


210        I've  Been  Thinking 

"Yes,  his  name's  Ethel.  He's  a  great  help 
to  her  mother." 

"Little  darling." 

"Yes;  I  tell  them  there  may  be  city  advan- 
tages, but  I  think  they're  much  better  off  where 
they  are." 

"Where  did  you  say  you  were?" 

"On  the  Connecticut  shore.  You  see,  hav- 
ing only  the  one  child,  Mrs.  Smith  is  very 
anxious  that  it  should  grow  up  healthy" 
(absent-minded  nods  indicative  of  full  atten- 
tion), "and  so  little  Ronald  never  comes  to 
the  city  at  all.  He  plays  with  the  fisherman's 
child  and  gets  great  drafts  of  fresh  air." 

"Oh,  how  perfectly  entrancing!  You're  quite 
a  poet." 

"No;  I'm  a  painter." 

Now  she  is  really  attentive.  She  thought 
you  were  just  an  ordinary  beast,  and  she  finds 
that  you  may  be  a  lion.  Smith?  Perhaps 
you're  Hopkinson  Smith. 


I've  Been  Thinking        211 

"Oh,  do  you  paint?  How  perfectly  ador- 
able !  What  do  you  paint  —  landscapes  or 
portraits?" 

Again  the  eye  wanders  and  she  inventories  a 
dress,  and  you  say :  — 

"Oils." 

"Do  you  ever  allow  visitors  to  come  to  your 
studio?" 

"Why,  I  never  prevent  them,  but  I'm  so 
afraid  it  will  bore  them  that  I  never  ask  them." 

"Oh,  how  could  anybody  be  bored  at  any- 
thing?" 

"But  every  one  hasn't  your  enthusiasm. 
My  studio  is  in  the  top  of  the  Madison  Square 
tower,  and  I  never  see  a  soul  from  week's  end 
to  week's  end." 

"Oh,  then  you're  not  married." 

"Dear,  no:  a  man  who  is  wedded  to  his  art 
mustn't  commit  bigamy." 

"Oh,  how  clever.    So  you're  a  bachelor?" 

"Yes,  but  I  have  my  wife  for  a  chaperon, 


212        I've  Been  Thinking 

and  I'd  be  delighted  to  have  you  come  and  take 
tea  with  us  some  Saturday  from  six  until  three." 
"Perfectly  delighted!"  Her  eye  now  catches 
sight  of  an  acquaintance  just  coming  in,  and 
as  you  prepare  to  leave  her  you  say :  — 

"Hope  you  don't  mind  a  little  artistic  un- 
conventionality.  We  always  have  beer  at  our 
teas  served  with  sugar  and  lemons,  the  Russian 
fashion." 

"Oh,  I  think  it's  much  better  than  cream. 
I  adore  unconventionally." 
'/You're  very  glad  you  met  me,  I'm  sure." 
"Awfully  good  of  you  to  say  so." 
Anything  goes  at  an  afternoon  tea.    But  it's 
better  not  to  go. 


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